Frau im Bade (Original Title) 1908

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this striking print, "Frau im Bade," using stark lines and bold contrasts. I imagine him hunched over the plate, working intensely, scraping and inking, trying to capture a sense of form with a minimal vocabulary. The woman is so present, isn't she? The confidence of the line, the dark shading around her corset, is a testament to Kirchner's skill. Those marks that build the body are so economical, so expressive. I wonder what he was thinking about when he made this print. Was he thinking about other printmakers, like Edvard Munch or even woodcut traditions? It's like he was looking at a drawing made by someone else and was trying to see how he would have drawn it. That's the beautiful thing about art. It's an ongoing conversation, artists talking to each other across time, inspiring each other, challenging each other. It’s a conversation that never ends, and one that's open to anyone who wants to join in.