Zelfportret met bril en sik 1930

Here’s a woodcut self-portrait of Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, now at the Rijksmuseum, and I wonder what it felt like to carve away at that wood, making the image come to life. Imagine the artist, pushing gouges through the block, deciding what to remove and what to leave, how to translate light and shadow through these marks. The white lines around his glasses and beard are so precise, like delicate threads holding the image together. It's a play with positive and negative space, like he's sculpting light from darkness. His gaze is intense through the lenses. The woodcut's graphic style reminds me of other printmakers like Munch, who were also exploring the expressive potential of black and white. Artists are in an ongoing conversation, riffing off each other's ideas, pushing the boundaries of what's possible.