Niobe 1965

Leon Golub made this image, Niobe, on a sheet of paper, using a lithographic crayon to make marks. You can really feel the process here, like it's not about making something perfect, but about pushing and pulling at the image until it reveals itself. There's this raw, immediate quality to the drawing. The crayon looks dragged and smeared, giving the figures a sense of urgency. Look at the figure on the bottom left. The arm extended outwards seems to convey both a sense of supplication but also of desperate reaching out. The limited palette of blacks, greens and ochres gives the image a sense of being caught in the middle of something unfolding, like we are seeing a fleeting glimpse of a scene in motion. Golub’s art reminds me of Nancy Spero’s work, both artists share this interest in classical themes seen through a more brutal, contemporary lens. The beauty of art is that it allows us to keep questioning, keep pushing, and keep seeing the world in new ways.