Electrism - Robert Lohman, c. 1969

In Electrism, Robert Lohman abandons the stable human body and instead constructs the composition from impact, direction, and velocity. The image seems to begin with an unseen event near the center and then break outward into dozens of angular fragments. These forms overlap, interrupt one another, and continue beyond the edges of the paper, making the work feel like one section of a much larger energetic field.

The title is especially useful in understanding the drawing. “Electrism” does not appear to describe a recognizable movement in the way that Cubism or Futurism does. It reads more like a word Lohman created for this specific visual condition: electricity transformed into an artistic language. The addition of “-ism” suggests a system, philosophy, or entire way of seeing built around electrical energy.

That word choice also gives the piece a slightly humorous confidence. Lohman is not merely drawing electricity; he is declaring a new state of art. Yet the title feels appropriate because the composition has its own internal rules. Everything is charged, angled, and moving. No shape remains quiet for long.

The strongest visual forms gather through the upper half of the sheet. Large pointed structures in yellow, orange, pink, and blue rise like flames, lightning bolts, or exploding stars. Their edges are reinforced with dark linear accents, giving them a sharper physical presence against the softer blue field behind them.

This blue background is important. It creates a cooler zone against which the warmer colors can ignite. Lohman applies it unevenly, allowing the paper to remain visible between the pencil strokes. The effect is not a solid backdrop but a vibrating field. The white gaps create the sensation of light passing through the composition.

The warm colors dominate the center. Yellow and orange create the greatest sense of heat and illumination, while pink lines run through them like charged pathways. These colors do not stay within clearly defined boundaries. They overlap and bleed visually into neighboring areas, increasing the impression that the image is active rather than fixed.

The thin black lines function differently from the colored pencil. They are more decisive and sometimes appear almost diagrammatic. They resemble wires, fractures, directional arrows, or the rapid marks of an electrical schematic. At several points, the black lines extend beyond the color beneath them, suggesting that the energy is still traveling.

What makes the work especially compelling is that the abstraction never becomes entirely separate from Lohman’s interest in the human figure. Near the center and lower middle, rounded and folded forms begin to suggest anatomy. A portrait emerges from the line work to create a face that feels both chaotic and structured. The face carries the structure of bone yet is built from electricity. 

This creates the impression that the individual is being electrified, fragmented, or absorbed into the larger event. The figure may be the source of the energy or another form caught inside it. Lohman gives no narrative clues that would settle the question; however, the calm confidence on the figure's face suggests embrace of his electrism. 

Lohman’s handling of space recalls aspects of Cubism and Futurism; however, the work does not feel like a formal exercise in either movement. Cubism often breaks a subject apart to examine it from several viewpoints, while Futurism uses repetition and diagonals to suggest movement. Lohman borrows from both tendencies but creates something more personal and unique.

His shapes are too emotional and irregular to feel purely analytical. They do not describe a machine with precision. Instead, they capture the sensation of machinery, voltage, speed, and collision. The drawing is less concerned with what electricity looks like than with what it might feel like inside the body.

The use of colored pencil contributes to this intimacy. The medium allows the artist’s pressure and repeated strokes to remain visible. Some areas are densely worked, while others are barely touched. This gives the image a handmade quality that contrasts with its technological title.

Electricity is often imagined as clean, mechanical, and impersonal. Lohman’s version is uneven, bodily, and emotionally charged. The colors have been built through touch rather than produced through a smooth industrial process. That tension between subject and medium keeps the work from becoming a cold celebration of technology.

The date of 1969 gives the work a particularly fitting context. The period was filled with excitement about space travel, telecommunications, television, scientific advancement, and the increasing speed at which images and information could circulate. At the same time, those developments created a broader sense that modern life was becoming faster and harder to fully absorb.

Lohman does not illustrate any one invention or event. There are no astronauts, televisions, power lines, or identifiable machines. Instead, he captures the atmosphere created by technological acceleration. Electrism feels like the psychological afterimage of living in a world becoming increasingly electronic.

The work also relates to the psychedelic visual culture of the late 1960s. The bright colors, expanding structure, shifting scale, and idealized central figure all create an altered sense of perception. Yet Lohman’s composition is more angular and fractured than the flowing curves often associated with psychedelic design. There is little softness or calm in the image. Even the rounded central forms are crossed by sharp lines. The work may be colorful, but it is not simply cheerful. Its energy has an aggressive edge.

This balance between excitement and discomfort is one of its strengths. Electricity provides light, movement, communication, and power, but it can also shock, burn, and overwhelm. Lohman allows both possibilities to remain visible. The image feels exhilarating because everything is happening at once, but that same intensity makes it difficult to find rest.

The eye moves repeatedly toward the large star-like form near the top, then downward through the smaller shards and into the denser central cluster. From there, diagonal lines send the viewer toward the lower corners and back into the blue field. The composition creates a circuit rather than a simple path.

The edges of the paper do not contain the energy comfortably. Several lines and colored planes appear to continue beyond the visible sheet. This gives the work the feeling of an event too large for its support, as though the drawing can show only one instant of an ongoing expansion.

Within Lohman’s catalog, Electrism demonstrates that his interest in psychological fragmentation did not depend upon recognizable faces or bodies. In later works, he might multiply eyes, distort profiles, or merge figures to communicate pressure and anxiety. Here, those same concerns are expressed through color and geometry.

The central figure is especially important in connecting the work to his broader body of work. Lohman repeatedly treated the human body as something flexible, capable of being stretched, divided, or merged with its surroundings. In Electrism, the body is no longer merely distorted by the environment; it has nearly become indistinguishable from it.

This suggests a person whose identity is being shaped by the forces around them. Technology and energy are not shown as tools held at a distance. They enter the figure, cross through it, and reorganize its form.

Color carries much of the emotional meaning. Blue provides distance and atmosphere. Yellow creates illumination. Orange introduces heat, while pink gives the work a more unusual, almost ecstatic intensity. Small areas of green temper the warmer passages but never become dominant.

The pink is particularly effective because it prevents the work from looking like a conventional image of fire or lightning. It makes the energy feel bodily and emotional rather than purely physical. Pink lines move through the composition like exposed nerves.

Lohman’s black marks give the image its necessary structure. Without them, the colored pencil might dissolve into a softer decorative arrangement. The dark lines create resistance. They interrupt, outline, and occasionally cut across the larger forms like sudden jolts. This interaction between color and line creates the central visual tension. Color expands while black line attempts to organize it. The two systems never fully agree. The result feels like energy pushing against containment.

Electrism is therefore not merely a bright abstraction. It is a work about finding calm within an environment of constant stimulation. Its forms are attractive, but they also collide. Its colors feel optimistic, yet its structure is fractured.

The work captures electricity as both external force and internal state. It can be read as an explosion, a nervous system, a modern city, a technological signal, or a mind reaching the limits of what it can process. Lohman never asks the viewer to choose among those possibilities. He allows them to flash across the page together, each one appearing briefly before being overtaken by the next.