Three Bathers in the Waves 1913

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this woodcut, Three Bathers in the Waves, in Germany. Look at the way he's carved the wood to make the marks! It’s all so deliberate. The wood gives this print a really physical feel. You can almost feel the blade slicing through the grain, the texture of the block. Look at the wave breaking in the foreground. The ink isn't smooth, it's got that woodcut bite. And the way the figures are so angular, so raw, like they've been hacked out of the wood too. There’s something about those sharp angles, those slightly off-kilter shapes that feels…alive. Kirchner’s part of that Expressionist movement, where it’s all about feeling it, not just seeing it. You can see how much Kirchner admired artists like Edvard Munch, both of them wrestling with how to show inner turmoil and feeling through the way they worked with materials. It's a conversation, this art thing.