Stehende Weibliche akte (Standing Female Nude) 1916

Lovis Corinth made this standing female nude using etching. It’s all about the line, isn’t it? Corinth makes a network of lines that are dense and dark in places, and then lets them fade away in others. It's what gives the figure its volume, its sense of being present, as if she could step right out of the frame. The way the lines are scratched and hatched, it’s almost like he’s feeling his way around the subject, finding the form through touch. See the quick, almost nervous strokes around her face and shoulders, and then how they soften and fade as they move down the body? There’s a real sense of movement, of something caught in the act of becoming. Think of contemporaries like Kathe Kollwitz, who were also working with the expressive potential of line. It's like they're not just depicting an image, but trying to capture something essential about the human condition. For Corinth, like for me, it’s the ambiguity that makes the work so compelling. It's never just one thing.