Study to 'The End of Hitler ' 1946

This oil painting, 'Study to "The End of Hitler"', by Kukryniksy, uses gestural marks and a sombre palette of browns and greys. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving quickly, urgently across the canvas as they lay down each stroke, and the painting emerges, shifts, and settles into place through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with the artist, imagining the weight of what they're trying to depict. What might they have been thinking as they made this? There's a particularly poignant gesture in the way Hitler throws his head back. You can feel the despair and finality in this posture. I'm also drawn to the texture of the paint itself—thick in some areas, thin in others, creating a surface that's both rugged and expressive. Painters are always in conversation, aren't they? Exchanging ideas and inspiring each other across time. As an embodied form of expression, painting embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple readings. It lets us approach meaning without fixed answers.