Portrait of Alfred Döblin c. 1913

Here's a drawing by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, depicting Alfred Döblin, made with what looks like graphite on paper. Look at these lines! Some of them are tentative, searching, and others are bold and confident, they remind me of the way I gesture in my own paintings. You can almost feel Kirchner’s hand moving across the page, trying to capture something about Döblin's essence. What might Kirchner have been thinking as he made this drawing? Was he trying to capture Döblin’s likeness, or something deeper, something about his personality or his place in the world? I wonder how Döblin felt being sketched by Kirchner - did he shift around a lot? The zig-zag hatching that defines the image reminds me of other expressionist portraits. Each stroke feels deliberate, contributing to the overall sense of nervous energy. It’s like Kirchner is not just drawing a face, but capturing a whole world of feeling and thought. It is through these kinds of exchanges that artists find new ways of seeing and representing the world around them. Kirchner reminds us that drawing, like painting, is a way of thinking through making.