Lizards 1912

Franz Marc made this small woodcut, titled "Lizards," carving away at the block, to leave these bold, dark lines. I see a world conjured through stark contrasts of light and shadow. You can sense Marc's hand in the deliberate, almost violent cuts into the wood. What was he thinking, wrestling with these creatures, this landscape? It’s like he was possessed by an urge to simplify, to distill the world into its rawest essence. I can imagine him hunched over the block, eyes squinting, driven by something primal. That circular form—is it a moon, an eye, a lens? How can one find oneself making these bold choices, editing and refining until only the essential forms remain? It makes me think of other artists like Kandinsky and his move towards abstraction, all of them trying to strip away the excess, to get at some deeper truth. Anyway, we're all just building on each other’s work, remixing and reimagining what it means to be alive and making art. There’s no one right way to see this print, and isn’t that the whole point?