Laufende Mädchen im Walde 1926

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's print, "Laufende Mädchen im Walde," pulses with raw energy. It's all jagged lines and shadowy figures, like a woodcut nightmare. I imagine Kirchner hunched over the block, tools in hand, carving out these figures with a kind of feverish intensity. See how the ink bleeds, how the shadows claw at the light? You can almost feel the artist's anxiety etched into the surface. Those girls running—are they escaping something, or are they lost? The longer I look, the more I start to think about German Expressionism, and how artists like Kirchner were grappling with a world that felt like it was falling apart. He was part of Die Brücke, the ‘Bridge’ group, and they were all trying to find a new way to express feeling in art. This print feels like a bridge to that anxiety. Art is about taking risks, about wrestling with uncertainty, and Kirchner was a master of that.