Portrait of a Man 1919

Erich Heckel’s ‘Portrait of a Man’ is a woodcut, made at a time when the woodcut was being used to make images that were stripped down and raw. Look at the green used for the face! What was he thinking? Was that green on purpose? I think it might be. The sharp angular lines are so deliberate, that green seems like a conscious choice. The lines carve out the planes of the face, but they also seem to be about a kind of emotional cutting. It’s like the man’s face is also a landscape. You can see his face is a thing that is alive with emotion. And how about those hands? Look how they meet beneath his chin, as though he is deep in thought or contemplation. Those hands show a certain sensibility, and I think it's important to consider the physicality of the medium. Like, what kind of mark can that gouge make? What kind of feeling does that make when you drag it across the surface? What does that feel like? And how does it connect to the wider field of expressionist portraits that were being made?