Kaunas. The Old Houses. 1931

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky made this piece, Kaunas. The Old Houses, using watercolor and ink, and you can feel the process in every mark. Look how the blues and browns aren't just colors but feelings. See the blue building on the left? The vertical strokes that define it are raw, immediate. They show the grain of the wood, but also the artist's hand moving, thinking. It's not just about depicting a building, but about the act of building itself, like he is constructing it before your eyes, stroke by stroke. Then there's the mountain in the distance, a soft, hazy gray that almost blends into the sky. It's a calming presence, a counterpoint to the bustling foreground. The whole image is tied together by Dobuzhinsky’s network of hatching, which may remind you of Cezanne's work. Yet the dreamlike quality of the image also prefigures surrealist painting. Like many great artworks, this picture embraces ambiguity, inviting us to dream.