Der Kopf der Tänzerin (Mary Wigman) 1926

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this etching of Mary Wigman’s head, Der Kopf der Tänzerin, with a drypoint needle on zinc. The line has a brittle quality to it, a nervous energy like a tightly wound spring. Kirchner's mark-making feels almost seismographic, as if recording the tremors of his own perception. Look closely at the lines that form Wigman’s hair – they’re a mass of scribbles, a bird’s nest of frantic energy. It’s as though Kirchner is trying to capture the fleeting essence of Wigman's spirit, the way she moved and pulsed with life. The etching feels so immediate, as if he’s wrestling with the image, trying to pin it down, but it keeps slipping away. See the way the etched lines vary in thickness and depth? They create a sense of depth and texture, pulling you into the image and making it feel almost three-dimensional. Kirchner, like his contemporary Edvard Munch, knew how to wring emotion from the simplest of lines, how to turn a portrait into a raw, unfiltered expression of the human condition. It’s a reminder that art is never really finished, it’s just abandoned.