Muzikant 1915

Lodewijk Schelfhout made this small etching, Muzikant, sometime in the early twentieth century. I love the way Schelfhout's dense cross-hatching gives the whole scene an intense, vibrating energy. I imagine him bent over the plate, digging in with his etching needle, lost in the world he’s creating. Look at the way he's built the figure of the musician: the broad planes of his chest, the angularity of his face. You can feel the confidence in those marks, the sureness of his vision. The dark shading suggests the influence of cubism, but there's also something very personal and expressive about it. You see echoes of other artists here, for sure, but Schelfhout is doing his own thing, finding his own voice. And that’s what it's all about, right? We're all just riffing off each other, trying to make something new.