Rider by Seashore 1937

Cyprián Majerník made Rider by Seashore with oil on canvas. Look at the brushwork in this piece! The painter has left such clear traces of his process. He's used big brushes, especially in the background, and the paint is put on with such speed that the layers beneath are allowed to shine through. The material qualities of this piece are really interesting. This isn’t some smoothed-over, academic painting. The paint is built up unevenly, and you can see the texture of each stroke, like the crest of a wave in that blue sea. But it's that rider's hat that really grabs my attention - it's so simply rendered, but it really adds to the surreal, dreamlike quality of the piece, making it somehow feel playful and unsettling at the same time. Majerník's work feels very much like a European cousin of someone like Milton Avery, who also uses simplified forms and a limited palette to create such evocative atmospheres.