River Landscape with Crane and Barges 1927

This is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s River Landscape with Crane and Barges, a colour woodcut. Imagine the artist carving into the wood, wrestling with the material to create those clean, angular lines. The colour palette is pretty limited – greens, browns, and blacks – but somehow Kirchner makes it all work to create this scene. I love the way he uses horizontal lines to suggest water, so simple but effective. It’s as though he’s inviting us to see the world not as it is, but as a series of shapes and forms. You can see echoes of the German Expressionists here, that raw, emotional intensity and distortion of form. But Kirchner was doing his own thing, pushing boundaries. Every artist builds upon the work of those who came before, experimenting. Like a conversation across time and space. I think that painting, like life, is a process of continuous discovery. You embrace the unexpected, allow for multiple meanings, and keep pushing forward.