Self-Portrait 1932

Mikuláš Galanda captured his own likeness in oil with a somber palette. You can see a lot of earth tones here; the way the paint kind of models the face, it's subtle. I imagine him looking in the mirror, really trying to understand himself, trying to be honest. Did he mix that murky greenish-blue in the background himself? It looks like a brave colour. It's the kind of colour that's not trying to be pretty, you know? When I look at that color, I see an echo of his state of mind, that he's wrestling with something profound. Maybe painting this was him thinking about his own life and work. Galanda, though he died relatively young, was hugely influential to the development of modernism in Slovakia. It makes you wonder how his work might have evolved, but in the meantime we have this one moment, this intense gaze, frozen in paint. I see here how painting lets us have a conversation across time.