Boy Wearing Bathing-Trunks and Straw Hat 1915

Lovis Corinth made this etching of a boy with a straw hat sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century. Look at the frenetic energy of the marks around him! It’s like the boy is standing still amidst a flurry of chaos, maybe of his own making. It feels like the artist is grappling with the challenge of capturing a fleeting moment. It’s a dance between intention and accident, control and surrender. Corinth's lines feel quick and decisive. The looseness and almost scribbled quality remind me of the work of other painters such as James Ensor or even some of the later work of Picasso. There is a sense of immediacy, as if Corinth is trying to capture not just the boy’s likeness, but something of his spirit. I imagine Corinth, standing before his subject, eyes darting back and forth, trying to translate the three-dimensional world onto a flat surface, each mark building upon the last.