Romantik (The Romantic) 1987

Lubomír Dusek made this print, Romantik, without a date, using etching. It's mostly light with these intense areas of black marks. I can see him scraping away at the plate, digging into it. The way the light falls suggests a kind of heavy darkness is engulfing everything. The texture of the black almost feels like fur, or maybe the dense bark of a tree. What was he feeling when he was making this? Was he thinking about German Romanticism? The loneness of nature? All those solitary figures contemplating vast landscapes? Or, was he just playing with the material and seeing what it could do? Maybe he was in dialogue with other printmakers like Käthe Kollwitz or even Goya, both of whom used the medium to express dark and emotional themes. Artists have always looked at one another's work, borrowing ideas, techniques, and ways of seeing. And that’s how art evolves, through conversation and exchange. This print embodies that ongoing dialogue, inviting us to feel and question rather than simply understand.