Female head 1912

This is a drawing of a woman's head by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. You can see how the artist builds up the form with layers of soft, smudgy graphite, almost caressing the paper. Look at the area around her left eye, how the shading deepens and defines the socket, giving her a soulful, melancholic expression. There's a real tenderness in the way he renders her face, as if he's trying to capture not just her likeness, but something of her inner life. The texture of the paper peeks through in places, reminding us of the physical act of drawing, the give and take between the artist's hand and the surface. It reminds me a little of Kathe Kollwitz, with its quiet intensity and focus on the human face as a landscape of emotion. Art's always talking to art, across time and place, isn’t it? Always an exchange of ideas.