Zittende vrouw 1862 - 1930

Antonio Mancini made this drawing of a seated woman with red chalk on paper. Chalk is an interesting material; it’s naturally occurring, coming straight from the earth. But it’s also fundamentally about dispersal. Think of a stone tool – a hammer, say. It concentrates energy in one place. Chalk does the opposite. It’s all about dissemination – a cloud of pigment, distributed across a surface. You can see this clearly in Mancini’s drawing, where the image seems to emerge from a haze of red. It's easy to see why chalk was favored for preparatory sketches. It offers a way of conjuring an image without committing to it fully, allowing for constant adjustment. In that sense, the qualities of the material mirror the artist's own mental process, a kind of thinking through making. Ultimately, paying attention to materials and how they are used helps us understand the artist’s vision, and the value of these explorations of material, challenging our notions of what we consider “fine art.”