1965
ink
From the collection of Museum of Modern Art
Dominant colour
Untitled is a 1965 ink by José Luis Cuevas, depicting Playing Card, held at Museum of Modern Art.
You see a tangled web of black lines on white paper—no faces, no clear shapes, just sharp, messy scribbles that almost look like a face or a body breaking apart. Cuevas made this in 1965, when Mexican art was still tied to bright murals and heroes. He ignored all that. Instead, he borrowed the raw, jagged style of German artists who drew after World War II, using quick, nervous marks to show doubt and chaos. The title hints at the Marquis de Sade, a writer obsessed with power and pain, but you’d never know without reading the label. If this feels like a punch to the gut, look up lithography—how ink sticks to stone, then paper, letting artists draw with the freedom of a pen but the weight of a print.
José Luis Cuevas was a Mexican artist, he often worked as a painter, writer, draftsman, engraver, illustrator, and printmaker.
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