In the Hammock 1945

"In the Hammock" by Alfredo Zalce looks like it was made with pencil or charcoal. I can imagine Zalce thinking about what it means to be suspended between two points. There is a real tenderness in the depiction of mother and child, as they are both together in the hammock, which is echoed in the gentle lines of the drawing. The hammock itself is depicted with so much detail, that you can almost see the weave. It reminds me a little of the drawings of Käthe Kollwitz, full of empathy for its subject matter and the conditions of human life. The horizontal lines in the floor work against the diagonal of the hammock creating tension as well as the contrast between stillness and movement. Each generation of artists learns from those that came before. It's a conversation across time. Artists make things, and those things make us feel, and think, and then we make things. That’s how it works.