Bathing Women 1909

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this print of bathers without a date using wood and colour. You can almost smell the wood, can't you? I love imagining Kirchner making this piece, how he shifted and emerged through trial, error, and intuition. I can see him carving into the wood, making those strong, angular lines that give the figures their shape. The colors, a kind of moody blue and a vibrant yellow, feel so Expressionist, so full of feeling. I sympathize with him and his work, those bold outlines, and those flat planes of color. It’s like he's trying to capture not just what he sees but what he feels. There's something so direct about the way he's captured the essence of the bathing women. Kirchner must have been looking at other prints, thinking about Matisse perhaps, wondering how he could cut down, reduce forms, to their most essential elements. Artists are always in conversation, always inspiring each other. Painting lets us embrace ambiguity and uncertainty.