Stier before 1940

Tinus van Doorn made this woodcut, 'Stier,' sometime before 1940. It's all about lines. Look at how the white lines carve out the dark ground, suggesting the bull's form with such economy. I can imagine van Doorn thinking about Franz Marc's animal paintings while he was making this. It has the same sense of the animal being part of the landscape, even though it's just this graphic image. The image also has a child-like feeling in its simplification. The tree, the star, the flying bird. Maybe van Doorn was thinking about folklore or some kind of primal myth. It makes me think of the bull in Picasso's Guernica, too, a symbol of brute force but also resilience. The way artists borrow and respond to each other across time is just so inspiring. They speak to each other through their work, and we get to listen in.