Gallery Talk: German Expressionist Drawings in Sketch, Shade, Smudge

Name: Gallery Talk: German Expressionist Drawings in Sketch, Shade, Smudge
Start: 2025-09-20T13:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-09-20T13:30:00-04:00
Location: Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138

Schedule

Sat Sep 20 2025 at 01:00 pm to 01:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138 | Cambridge, MA

The exhibition Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black includes a selection of drawings by artists from the German expressionist groups The Bridge and The Blue Rider. Join curatorial fellow Peter Murphy to explore the different ways these groups approached drawing.
Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black celebrates the act of drawing using familiar tools—charcoal, chalk, crayon, and graphite. Each type of material has distinctive properties: charcoal can be intensely rich and velvety, or delicately gray and suggestive, while graphite is slippery, shiny, and easy to erase. Crayon is deeply black and waxy, whereas chalk can be crumbly and diffuse. The creative manipulations of these media—smudging, scraping, and erasing—make them versatile tools for adding intensity, depth, precision, and expression to an artist’s vision.
Led by:
Peter Murphy, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art
Please check in with museum staff at the Visitor Services desk in the Calderwood Courtyard to request to join the gallery talk. Space is limited, and talks are available on a first-come, first-served basis; no registration is required.