Sketch Portrait of a Man 1905

Olga Boznanska made this Sketch Portrait of a Man using oil paint, with no confirmed date. Look at these marks! Boznanska has built up the image with layers of loose brushstrokes in browns, blues and greens. You can see how she's reworked the surface, adding and subtracting until the face emerges from the ground. It's like she's searching for the man within the paint. The marks around the eyes are particularly evocative. The red rimming the eye makes me feel this is a person who is tired or has been crying, this really elevates it beyond a mere sketch. You can see the influence of artists like Manet here, but Boznanska pushes the process even further, embracing the unfinished and ambiguous. It reminds me that art is not about capturing a fixed reality, but about the ongoing conversation between the artist, the medium, and the world.