14. Peter Takal
(1905-1995)
Man with a Cigar

(click on image to print)
Takal: Man with a Cigar

Man with a Cigar

Original drawing in pen and black ink on buff wove paper, 320 x 240 mm. Takal was born in Bucharest, Romania, lived and worked in Berlin in the Twenties, in Paris in the Thirties, and came to New York in the Forties, where he became an American citizen. As opposed to many of his colleagues, his preferred medium was pen and ink, and John Canaday, in the New York Times, wrote of his “perfectly controlled mastery of the black line as an abstract delight and a descriptive force.” While represented in over a hundred public institutions, the largest collection of Takal’s work is at the Arkansas Art Center. The present sketch, less complex than his later work and far from the surrealism that tinges it, dates from his years in Paris, done from life, presumably while sitting at a café table. A fine drawing, though.