Pulled, Scraped, and Scratched

About

Not all paint goes on with a brush. Gustave Courbet laid rocks and snow onto canvas with a palette knife in the 1860s, and Rembrandt scratched into wet paint with the end of his brush to draw out curls and lace. Scoring through one layer to reveal another, known as sgraffito, is also a way of decorating plaster and pottery.

Post-war painters made these methods central. Nicolas de Staël built slabs of colour with knives and spatulas in the early 1950s. In London, Frank Auerbach scraped each day's work back to the canvas and began again until an image held. From the 1980s Gerhard Richter dragged paint across large surfaces with a long squeegee, creating veils that tear to reveal colours beneath. Look for parallel streaks, sharp edges where a blade lifted, ridges at the end of a pull and bright underlayers showing through scored lines.