Die Graphik Ernst Ludwig Kirchner bis 1924 1924

This print by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is a book cover, probably made with woodblock, around 1924. Just look at that flat purple and the way the figures are hacked out of the block with brutal, angular cuts! I can only imagine Kirchner, with his contemporaries from Die Brücke, holed up in Dresden, wrestling with the wood. It’s a struggle to get the image out, a real physicality to the process, which is so different from the smooth seductions of oil paint, right? You can feel him carving away, making hard decisions about what to keep and what to eliminate. That face on the right, so cool and impenetrable, and then the slump of the other figure lost in his work, is it a painting or a printing press? There’s something very raw and honest about printmaking, and I think it suited Kirchner’s temperament. It’s like he’s saying, "Here it is, no frills, take it or leave it." And that directness, that willingness to be vulnerable, is what makes his work so powerful. It reminds me a lot of my own process where I’m trying to be honest with myself.