Colcha 1935 - 1942

This is a lovely drawing, in what looks like gouache, perhaps made as a study for a textile. Looking at the color swatches on the left, I wonder if the artist was experimenting with different palettes, or if these are simply the colors they had to hand. There’s something so satisfying about this kind of pattern-making. I imagine the artist, maybe a young woman, sitting at a table, meticulously planning how the motifs might repeat and relate to one another. The distribution of shapes and colors creates a visual rhythm. The sinuous, elegant lines of the stems and leaves dance across the surface. Each flower is unique, a small world unto itself. It's really something, isn't it? And you can just feel that the maker of this colcha loves playing with variations on a theme. It reminds me of Hilma af Klint or even some of the folk art that was being made at the same time. I think about all the anonymous artists who have come before us, inspiring one another’s creativity through an exchange of ideas across time. It’s really like a conversation through painting.