Witches' Dance 1903

Max Slevogt conjured this “Witches’ Dance” with etching on paper. What’s exciting for me is seeing how he allows the etched line to create both form and tone. The frenzied scene is rendered through a dense network of marks, a swarm of dashes and scratches that evoke the energy of the dance. Look closely, and you can almost feel the scratch of the needle on the plate. Slevogt isn’t trying to hide his process. There is a real sense of immediacy here, a feeling that the image has been directly pulled from the artist’s subconscious. The tonal range achieved through the close hatching is remarkable, with some areas built up with darker lines to give weight and form to the figures and darker depth to the background. I’m reminded of Käthe Kollwitz, another German artist who was a master printmaker, in how she uses the expressive potential of the medium to convey a rawness and emotional intensity. Art is a conversation, after all, between artists and viewers across time.