Detlev Foth’s drawings form a counterpoint to his canvases – more immediate and nervy, and working chiefly on large sheets of paper, he favours charcoal, graphite and oil-pastel. Where his paintings use colour and scale, the drawings emphasise gesture and economy of line. Whole bodies are reduced to a few decisive strokes, and the oscillation between suggestion and anatomical detail is what gives the drawings their erotic charge. Desire is implied by omission as much as by depiction.

Many of Foth’s drawings are surprisingly large, so that a charcoal trace can read as a presence in the room rather than a private sketch. The life-drawing immediacy – the slight abrasions, the visible erasures, the residual smear of a palm – creates an intimacy that often feels more candid and vulnerable than the bravura of his oils.