Forms in Space 1952 - 1964

Shirley Witebsky made 'Forms in Space' without a date, but I bet the process was a dance of experimentation. I love the push and pull of the floating forms, captured in delicate lines and muted tones. They make me think about what it was like for Witebsky to make it. Maybe she started with a charcoal drawing, layering textures with crayon, until the final image emerged. The dark grey and black create such a dramatic and kind of melancholic mood. It's like she's conjuring a whole cosmic world, bit by bit, just with the pressure of the crayon and the stroke of the charcoal. The composition is so interesting. Those little blobby figures feel like they’re trying to say something, caught in a cosmic dance. And you can see her process, the rubbing back and forth of the media on the surface, and the ghost-like traces that remain. It's as though she's in conversation with artists like Gorky or maybe even Kandinsky, translating their ideas into her own visual language.