Early 1914

Anders Zorn made this etching, sometime ‘early’ in his career, using a pretty simple monochrome palette. You can almost feel Zorn’s hand moving across the plate, scratching and hatching with drypoint to build up the image. I wonder what it was like for him, standing there, looking at the model, translating her three-dimensional form onto a flat surface. It’s interesting to consider how the medium shapes our experience. The stark, linear quality gives the scene a kind of immediacy, almost like a snapshot. Her pose, with arms raised, feels both natural and slightly theatrical, capturing a moment of vulnerability and strength. This work reminds me a little of Käthe Kollwitz, though her work is a bit more loaded and political. All artists are in this ongoing conversation across time, riffing off each other's ideas and techniques. For me, painting and printmaking is a form of embodied expression, embracing ambiguity.