Zelfportret 1898 - 1938

Abraham de Miranda made this self-portrait, with etching, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. It's really all about the surface here. You can almost feel the way the metal plate was bitten into by acid to make the marks that describe Miranda’s face. Look closely, and you can see how the density of the marks shifts to create the shadows and volumes. The image feels immediate and intimate, like a glimpse into the artist's private world. I keep coming back to his eyes, though. Those dark, almost desperate, smudges of ink. The eyes feel like the key to the whole thing. It reminds me of some of the early self-portraits of Paula Modersohn-Becker - raw, direct, and full of feeling. All these marks, all this process, and the result is an artwork full of such emotion.