Acteon 1947

Kurt Seligmann’s “Acteon” is made with delicate marks, a monochrome palette, and a whole lot of surrealist imagination. I’m just picturing him hunched over this plate, scratching away, building up these incredibly intricate lines. There is a sense of metamorphosis and transformation; a human figure is melding with the animal kingdom. The composition feels really dynamic, but also kind of unsettling—like a dream you can't quite shake off. The image seems to emerge from some hidden, interior space where meaning is not fixed, but always in flux. It reminds me of artists like Gorky or Masson, who were also wrestling with the subconscious and trying to find new ways of representing reality. Seligmann’s artwork, as with all artworks, is part of a larger conversation. It's not just about what he was trying to say, but about what we bring to it as viewers.