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Manuel Neri created Mujer Pegada Study [Gustavo No. 12] in 1985. This artwork is from a series of studies for his marble relief sculptures Mujer Pegada and was made with charcoal, oil pastel, and graphite on pale beige paper just a touch over one foot tall by a little over ten inches wide. It features a standing female form appearing attached to, or maybe emerging from, a small section of wall just left of center. Layers of slate gray, light mauve, and walnut brown oil pastel, and smudgy black charcoal provide the color. The colors sometimes define the figure and her background as separate and sometimes blur the boundaries between them.

The wall section is outlined with thin, straight graphite lines that are uneven and blocky, like steps carved out of the wall’s edges. There are two intriguing contrasts to the straight borders of the wall. First, in some places, a thick application of color does not quite reach the wall’s borders, and in other places Neri has colored outside the lines. The second contrast was created by tearing out bits of the paper the study was sketched on. One is to the left of the wall up high, and another is part of the wall next to her right leg. A layer of paper beneath is colored with the same oil pastels and charcoal. The torn edges feel reminiscent of the veins of gray that course through the Carrara marble Neri would go on to use for the sculpture based on this study.

At the center of the wall, a faceless, armless woman is not so much sketched as hinted at. Her head is outlined with dark gray, but the rest of her is imagined. Hourglass curves of black charcoal next to her define her left side from shoulder to knee. Her right upper arm, and down to her right foot is a thick streak of the walnut brown. And while much of her seems to be colored by the pale mauve, from her breasts down to the ground, she is mostly colored over in criss-crossing slate gray. A hint of the same hovers over her right shoulder.

All around the otherwise plain beige paper are tiny smudges and streaks. The figure emerging from her wall is so captivating, it could be easy to miss these imperfections in the field around her. But noticing them brings the viewer into the artist’s process to imagine his hand moving swiftly across the page and leaving behind bits of color his hand had picked up earlier.

In pencil, Neri wrote in two lines of cursive text across the top of the paper: “Arte de la verdad a nuestra vida.” Part of the “nuestra” touches the top of the figure’s head. Much of the word also overlaps with a smear of the light mauve that escaped the top edge of the wall on the left. It feels impossible to tell whether the text is over or under the pastel color, or really what order Neri composed any of the elements of the study.