Drie vrouwelijke naakten 1919

Wilhelm Lehmbruck made this print, Drie vrouwelijke naakten, using etching. It’s all in a delicate pale grey. Look at those figures emerging hesitantly, like ghosts in the landscape. The lines are so simple, but they suggest so much. It makes me think about what Lehmbruck was thinking when he made it. Maybe he was trying to capture a fleeting moment, a dream, or a memory. The lines feel kind of vulnerable to me, they capture the very essence of the figures, stripped down to their most basic forms. The one standing up, on the right, how the few lines make up her torso, she’s like a Giacometti sculpture of a woman – all thin and elegant. And that seated figure on the left, she looks like she’s deep in thought, maybe contemplating her own existence. I think it relates to the wider tradition of figurative art. Painters are always in conversation, bouncing ideas off each other across time, inspiring creativity. This print, with all its ambiguity and uncertainty, leaves room for you to bring your own feelings to it.