Spinnende Bäuerin (Original Title) 1919

Here is a woodcut called 'Spinnende Bäuerin' or 'Spinning Peasant Woman' by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Imagine Kirchner attacking the block of wood with his tools, hacking away to leave these stark, angular shapes! The black ink is laid on thick, and there’s a real tension between the peasant woman and the turning wheel. It feels almost violent! I can imagine him, driven by some inner angst, using the wood to express something raw and immediate. There's a kind of vulnerability in the roughness of the cuts, as though Kirchner wasn't trying to create a perfect image, but to release something urgent from inside himself. Other artists like Edvard Munch and Emil Nolde were trying similar methods around the same time. It's like he's saying: art doesn't have to be pretty; it can be a scream, a shout, a primal expression of what it means to be alive!