Industrial Strife 1938

Boris Gorelick made this print, Industrial Strife, and you can feel the graphic power of the medium. I imagine him working on the plate, digging into it, removing the material to create these contrasts of light and dark. The scene is a dense mash-up of figures, faces, and machinery. He creates a sense of chaos and tension, the black and white intensifying this feeling. Look at the way he renders the faces – some are anguished, some seem lost, and others are like ghosts in the machine. It’s as if he's saying something about the human cost of industry. I see the influence of other artists who were grappling with similar themes, like the German Expressionists. There's a real conversation happening between artists across time, each responding to the world around them. The process of artmaking is a way to make sense of the complexities of life, and it's so cool to see how artists grapple with these ideas in their own way.