Kauernde 1914

This is Egon Schiele’s etching, Kauernde, and you can really sense the artist's hand at work. It feels like he was wrestling with the plate, trying to pin down this figure with a furious energy. Look at those lines, so raw and urgent! They remind me of how much pressure and force it takes to carve into metal. Schiele must have been really going for it. You can almost hear the scratching of the needle, right? I'm trying to imagine what Schiele was thinking as he made this print; he was so young when he died. Was he trying to capture something fleeting, some kind of emotional truth? You can see how the lines dig in and scrape away, searching for the form. I see a pentimento in the final work, a trace of what it once was as it has emerged. It’s like Schiele is here, grappling with form and feeling, and inviting us to grapple along with him. It reminds me that artists are always in conversation with each other, inspiring and pushing each other to see the world in new ways.