Luonnos Veljesvala seinämaalaukseen ja värejä 1912

This is Magnus Enckell's preparatory sketch for the Brotherhood mural, worked in colored pencil. I can almost feel Enckell's hand moving across the paper, a dance of intuition and planning. Look at the bottom, these little blocks of color, like a painter's palette made solid. I wonder, what was Enckell thinking about when he made this? About color? About form? You can see the shapes, the suggestion of figures, but it's the color that really sings. That primary red, sitting like a brooding question mark against the blues, yellows, and purples. It feels playful, but with an undercurrent of something serious, maybe even spiritual. There's a push and pull here, a tension between the abstract and the figurative. In that way it reminds me of Philip Guston, who was also interested in the kind of push and pull, where things aren’t so set and certain. Artists like Enckell and Guston keep the conversation going, pushing boundaries, inviting us to see the world in new ways, in progress.