The profile (Sarajevo, autumn 1990) 1990

Alfred Freddy Krupa drew this portrait in Sarajevo in the autumn of 1990 with what looks like colored pencils. I bet he stood in front of his model, closely observing the sitter’s features, trying to capture not just the likeness but the feeling of being in that room, in that city, at that moment in time. The soft hues of the pencils create a gentle, almost melancholic mood. Look at how Krupa uses the light to define the planes of the face, especially the nose and brow line. There’s a real sensitivity to the gradations of tone, moving from light to shadow. The lines around the figure fade into the background, which makes me think about how memory blurs the edges of what we see. Krupa would have been only 19 years old, searching for something to hold onto through art. It reminds me of other young painters like Egon Schiele, grappling with similar questions of identity and expression through portraiture. It’s like all these artists, across time and space, are in conversation with each other, learning and growing through the act of painting.