Disabled 1924

Anatol Petrytsky made this painting, titled Disabled, with what looks like oil paint. He’s created a family scene with muted browns and greys, except for that red headscarf which immediately draws your eye. I wonder about the making of this piece and what the process was like for Petrytsky. Did he start with lighter tones and then slowly build up the darker layers? What was the texture like on the canvas as he worked? I wonder what he was thinking as he painted each figure. There’s so much pathos in the faces and the way they are huddled together. See how the paint seems to form rough edges and lines, and that the feet are bare, suggesting vulnerability. This piece reminds me of the work of Kathe Kollwitz, another artist who was able to communicate raw emotion through a limited colour palette. It makes you think about how artists are in an ongoing conversation, influencing one another across time and place. In the end, painting is just one big embodied expression that embraces ambiguity.