Dialogue with the Chimera 1987

Vasile Kazar made 'Dialogue with the Chimera' in 1972 using watercolour and ink. There's something incredibly playful and exploratory about the way Kazar uses line and colour here; he dives right in and just lets it flow, which I love. You can really see the materiality of the work, especially where the ink bleeds into the paper, creating these unpredictable textures. The colours, muted and earthy, feel both grounded and otherworldly, like they're emerging from some subconscious space. Look at the way he renders the figures, they’re solid but kind of dissolving back into the paper. The lines are so energized, kind of frantically searching for their forms within the composition. This reminds me a little of Philip Guston's later work, which, like this, has a raw, unapologetic honesty. Kazar reminds us that art is really just an ongoing conversation across time, where ambiguity is not a flaw, but an invitation.