Lines in Vertical Area 1940

Werner Drewes made this print titled 'Lines in Vertical Area' using etching, an intaglio printmaking process. It’s all about lines here, right? And how they make space, or how they don’t! What really grabs me are the textures, from the smooth white rectangles to the dense, almost velvety blacks. There’s this play of depth, where some lines seem to float forward, while others recede. Check out the way the grid hovers in the center; it's like a window, but one that’s also falling apart, or maybe being built. Drewes is making visible a sensation - the feeling that things are simultaneously solid and dissolving. You know, this reminds me a little bit of Mondrian, but with a twist. Where Mondrian is all about clean, geometric purity, Drewes throws in this sense of chaos and incompleteness. It’s like a conversation between order and disorder, and who knows which one will win!