Jai-Alai 1939

Louis Schanker made this print called Jai-Alai, using woodblock, in the 20th Century, maybe the 1930s. It’s got these blue-grey and green grounds with shapes rendered in black outline. The palette is a mix of muted tones, punctuated by the yellow and red shapes which creates a playful tension. You know, looking at this, I imagine Schanker in his studio, carving away at the wood, figuring out how to make these shapes talk to each other. I imagine him thinking about the texture of the wood, how it would catch the ink. This white figure, it’s almost ghostly, or clown-like. It's got this melancholy, yet humorous presence. The pink triangles feel like they are bouncing across the paper, and the yellow almost like a beam of light. Schanker was part of a community of artists who were pushing the boundaries of abstraction. There was a real conversation happening between artists who were trying to find new ways of representing the world. And through experimentation, hopefully, the viewer finds new meaning.