Kale boom 1922

Arnold Pijpers made this stark woodcut, Kale boom, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. The process feels very direct, a bold contrast between the black ink and the white paper, all about the tension and energy of mark-making. I love how the inky black branches reach and tangle across the upper part of the image, like a kind of skeletal web. You can almost feel the way Pijpers dug into the wood to create these lines. And the way he’s used texture to describe the land! See how he’s varied the marks to suggest depth and form, building up these small, scratchy strokes into something solid and real. It’s a real balancing act between abstraction and representation. This print reminds me a little bit of the graphic work of someone like Emil Nolde, though perhaps with a quieter, more contemplative mood. It shows how art can be a conversation across time and place, each artist responding to and building upon what came before.