The Church of Megeve (L'Eglise de Megeve) 1930

Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac made this print, called 'The Church of Megeve', with etching. The lines are all energy, a flurry of marks working together to describe this swiss church in winter. You can really feel the brisk air. The texture here is all in the hatching – the way the artist uses closely spaced parallel lines to create areas of tone and shadow. See how the lines get denser in the church to give it weight and form, and how much lighter the lines are in the foreground, where the snow is? It's all about pressure and rhythm. Look how the bare trees are rendered with such scratchy, gestural marks – it’s like he’s trying to capture not just the look of the trees, but also the feeling of them, gnarled and reaching. Segonzac reminds me of Picasso, an artist also unafraid to embrace simplicity and directness in his work. Both artists show us that sometimes, the most powerful statements are made with the fewest possible lines. It’s like a visual haiku, distilling a whole scene down to its bare essentials.