Kniender Akt 1916

Christian Rohlfs made this nude in, well, we don’t know exactly when, using tempera, and maybe some other kinds of paint. Look how he draws the outline, not with a hard black line, but with a soft dark color, like he’s feeling the weight of the figure, describing a body that is both there and not there. The colors in this piece do a lot of work. There’s a limited palette – ochres, umbers, black and blues. The ochre paint creates a kind of glow that makes the figure radiant, but also sort of melancholic, like a memory. The blues add an interesting tension, like a bruise beneath the skin. This reminds me a little bit of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another German artist who was interested in the emotional power of color and the expressive potential of the human form. Ultimately, I think it’s a painting that is about the mystery of the body, and the way that paint can capture something essential about being alive.