Mädchen Auf Der Liege 1926

Otto Mueller made this drawing with chalks on paper, of a girl reclining. The way he uses these soft materials, chalk and paper, lets the image emerge as if from a dream. There are thin lines, scratchy areas and smudges, and the whole image seems to be held together loosely. Look at the way her face is almost completely shadowed, a dense mass of black chalk, while her body is defined by soft, pale yellows. The drawing has an unreal quality, as if she is dissolving into the surface. The marks are very direct and unblended. It's possible to see the marks going this way and that, and they almost look like knitting, holding the image together in a structural way. Mueller’s contemporary, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, was also interested in the nude, but in a very different way, one more aggressive and confrontational. With Mueller, the process is one of gentle emergence and quiet contemplation.