Divers 1939

Hananiah Harari’s ‘Divers’ is a print of leaping figures rendered in bold colors and black outlines. I love how Harari's taken the mundane act of diving and turned it into a kind of acrobatic dance. You can almost feel the cool, splashy freedom as these figures twist and turn in mid-air. I wonder if Harari was thinking about Fernand Léger’s paintings of leisure when he made this, the way he simplifies the body into these geometric shapes, but still manages to convey so much movement and joy. It’s like he's not just showing us divers, but the pure sensation of diving. It reminds me of my own process, how I start with a basic form and then just let the colors and shapes build on each other. It’s that tension between control and letting go that makes a painting really sing. Like, are they diving or flying? It’s up to us to decide!