Dancers 1911

Erich Heckel made this colour linocut, Dancers, in 1910 and the marks suggest to me the artist was in such a hurry to set the scene. There’s a sense of urgency in the cut of the lino, not unlike the energy and movement of the dancers themselves. I feel like he’s really sympathizing with those dancers, thinking maybe, “I get you, I too want to fling myself around, to shake off the constraints.” The red and the black stand out against the beige background, the forms delineated with thick outlines to flatten the figures, a favored trick of the Expressionists. I imagine Heckel in his studio, carving the lino with his tools, thinking about Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, and the other Brücke artists. Painters are always looking at each other's work and I feel this piece is part of that conversation; an embodied expression, a dialogue between bodies, minds, and materials.