These pen and india--ink drawings on newsprint (18 x 24) date from c 1961--1962. They were done at one “sitting,” and were a free flow of invented motifs. None were intended as preparatory studies for a picture. Some originate in personal experiences and emotions, others from art viewed in classes at Barnard College, Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art or books. None are copies. The lower left figure is a character that reappears more fully realized  in a later capriccio and that is vaguely related to German literature, in particular, to characters created by Thomas Mann. The woman holding a child’s hand  recalls Renaissance types, while other individual figures and groups of figures have devotional aspects, also Italian inspired. Love and lovemaking is splashed all over the page; bodily functions, as might be seen in figures in Flemish and Dutch 16th and 17th century art, are played with freely.

I chose capriccio rather than studies or sketches to capture the flavor of the immediacy of invention and the whimsy and playfulness of many the actors. Scattering the figures across the sheet recalls arrangements in Hokusai’s Manga