Dogs 1925

Christian Rohlfs made this print, Dogs, using woodcut and monotype techniques, and you can feel him working out how to approach the image. There’s a sort of tension, a real back and forth, in the way the dogs’ forms are both defined and dissolved by the red ground, like they’re struggling to emerge from a primordial soup. See that dog at the top, how it merges into the background, only defined by a sketchy black outline? It's an image full of uncertainty. You can tell Rohlfs is thinking, how do I make this image? What do I include, what do I leave out? The red feels alive, almost vibrating. It’s a pretty limited palette, but he wrings so much out of it. It reminds me of Kirchner, how he used colour and form to express feeling, to get at something raw and essential.