Harnessed Team 1930

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this drawing, 'Harnessed Team', with ink on paper. Isn’t it something? There’s a real urgency to the line work, a restless energy that feels very modern. Look at how the horse and rider are reduced to these jagged, almost abstract shapes. It’s like Kirchner is trying to capture the feeling of movement, the raw power of the horse. And then you notice these darker, more decisive marks around the harness and the rider’s body, giving the figures a sense of weight and presence. It’s not just about what is depicted, but how, and that’s where the real meaning lies, right? Kirchner was part of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke, and you can see that shared interest in raw emotion and simplified forms. I think of someone like Franz Marc, another expressionist painter interested in animals as a kind of spiritual force. Like Kirchner, Marc knew that art is a conversation, a way of seeing and feeling the world anew.