Babits: The Book of Jonah II 1975

Maria Bozoky made "Babits: The Book of Jonah II" with ink on paper, and it's this furious dance of black marks on a white ground. You can really sense Bozoky working through something, the pressure of the brush, the urgency of the moment. The materiality here is all about the contrast between the slick, fluid ink and the absorbent paper. See how the ink bleeds and feathers in some areas, creating these soft, gray shadows, while elsewhere it sits on the surface in sharp, decisive lines? That big, round eye of the fish is so simply rendered, just an outline, but it holds the whole composition together. It's like everything else is swirling around it, caught in the same riptide. This piece reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly’s work, in the way it balances gesture and form, chaos and control. But where Twombly is all about the grand gesture, Bozoky feels more intimate, more personal. It's a reminder that art doesn't always have to be pretty or polished; sometimes, it's about wrestling with something difficult and finding a way to make it visible.