Excavation 1929

Harry Sternberg’s print ‘Excavation’ is a flurry of hatched lines, built up to describe a busy scene, somewhere between building site and coal mine. The artist's hand has been really busy here! I imagine him, bent over the printing plate, adding tiny marks, and then larger ones, like the swell of a bicep, or the barrel of some kind of pipe. What must it have been like to make this, breathing in the acid fumes, wondering if it would all come together? It reminds me a little of the Ashcan School, artists who were documenting everyday life, not always beautiful, but always, always real. I am feeling the intensity of labour here, as well as the looming shapes, the heavy materials and the sheer physical effort of the workers. Artists are always in conversation, looking and learning from one another, building on past ideas, responding to the present and reaching out to the future. And with mark-making like this, we can feel the hand of the artist, reaching out to us, now.