Vajda Lajos Fekete Sugarak 1939 1939

Vajda Lajos made "Fekete Sugarak" or "Black Rays" in 1939, and it looks like he used ink on paper. This piece feels like a puzzle with a few missing pieces. I love how Lajos uses black ink to create a world that is both familiar and dreamlike. Look at the linear marks, scratchy and urgent. Notice how they build up a sense of texture and depth. The strokes are thick in some places and thin in others, like the artist was feeling his way through the image. The composition is a bit off-kilter, which adds to the tension. The left of the image has these wing-like shapes and the right more geometric with a strange lumpen shape above it. Are we looking at a bird, or a landscape, or some kind of bizarre hybrid? It's this ambiguity that makes the piece so compelling. Thinking about other artists, I'm reminded of the surrealist landscapes of Yves Tanguy, both exploring the space between representation and abstraction. Like many great works of art, "Black Rays" resists easy answers.