Untitled (Abstract) 1937

Carl Robert Holty made this abstract drawing with graphite on paper. The soft smudges and shaded marks create a sense of depth. Holty coaxes the pencil across the surface, back and forth, to conjure overlapping forms. What did he want to leave behind, and what did he want to erase? I like to imagine the artist, feeling his way around the composition, allowing the forms to shift and breathe. The dark circle sits like an anchor within the white space of the larger form. The image relates to Holty's earlier experiments with cubism, a kind of conversation with artists such as Picasso and Braque, whose work also explored the interplay between abstraction and representation. It is through this process of call and response that artists continually expand the possibilities of their medium, creating art that speaks not only to us but to each other.