Golde, Tevia's Wife 1957 - 1961

Anatoli Kaplan made this lithograph of ‘Golde, Tevia’s Wife’ with dense horizontal marks that evoke both the subject's presence and her potential disappearance into the background. Can you imagine Kaplan working on this? He’s dragging the litho crayon across the stone over and over, layering those marks with the weight of his attention. There’s a deep humanity here, especially in the eyes, which appear soft yet knowing. I feel like this is a painting that’s thinking about time, memory, and the way we perceive each other. The horizontal marks could symbolize the passage of time, or the layers of experience that accumulate to form a life. It makes me think of other artists who use repetition to build form, like Agnes Martin, but with a twist of narrative. It’s like Kaplan is saying, “Here is Golde, but she is also a collection of moments, of marks, of time.” That's what we all are, right? Painting lets us hold those contradictions.