Liegender weiblicher Akt auf einer Ottomane c. 1924

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this drawing of a reclining nude, maybe with coloured pencils, it’s hard to know. The marks are raw, scratchy, and anxious, a flurry of lines that somehow manage to describe a body at rest. I imagine Kirchner hovering over the paper, wrestling with how to capture the essence of his model. I think of artists like Schiele who also went right to the quick. Check out the way Kirchner uses purple to outline her form, giving her a kind of regal presence against the more chaotic blues, reds, and yellows. It’s like he’s trying to pin her down, to make sense of her, but the marks keep slipping and sliding, never quite settling. It reminds me of the struggle we all face as artists, trying to grasp something fleeting and turn it into something solid. Kirchner is in conversation with many artists here. Ultimately, painting is a form of inquiry, a way of grappling with the world and our place within it, an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, inspiring creativity.