Mary Wigman's Dance of the Dead 1928

Here is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's painting—you can almost smell the oils, feel the brushstrokes loaded with pigment! The figures are rendered in a palette that is both eerie and vibrant—reds, purples, greens—applied with bold, decisive strokes. I imagine Kirchner, in his studio, wrestling with the canvas, trying to capture the raw intensity of Mary Wigman's dance. What was he thinking as he laid down those thick, expressive lines? Probably thinking, like I do when I'm in the studio, how to get the paint to do what I want it to. The gestures are so charged—the reaching arms, the tilted heads—each one communicating a sense of anguish and desperation. You can see the influence of the German Expressionists here, that willingness to distort reality to convey inner emotion. It's like Kirchner is saying, "Let's not be afraid to look at the dark side, to confront the uncomfortable truths about human existence." And it's through his painting that he invites us to do the same, encouraging us to bring our own experiences to the conversation.