Jakobs kamp med englen 1905

Oluf Hartmann made this etching of Jacob wrestling with the angel sometime around the turn of the century. Look at the way he builds up the image with these tiny, almost frantic marks. It’s like he's not just depicting a struggle, but enacting it in the very process of creation. The darkness here is palpable. The figures emerge from a murky background, their forms barely defined, locked in this intense embrace or fight, it’s hard to tell which. See how the light catches the angel's wing, or the muscles in Jacob's leg, rendered with such delicate precision. Hartmann reminds me of Käthe Kollwitz, but with a biblical twist. Hartmann doesn't offer any easy answers. It's all about ambiguity and the raw, emotional experience of grappling with something bigger than yourself, like art itself, perhaps.