The Green Bridge (Die grune Brucke) 1912

This print of The Green Bridge by Lyonel Feininger is a real lesson in how a limited palette doesn’t limit expression. What he does with the etching is kind of like drawing with light. I am obsessed with the energy in this piece. Look at the cobbled street. It's teeming with these little dots, almost like the page is vibrating. And the figures? They're not just walking; they're dancing! The lines are scratchy, but delicate. It’s like he's trying to capture not just what he sees, but how it feels to be there, in that moment, a little frenetic, a little dreamlike. Feininger’s later Bauhaus paintings often have a similar fractured, faceted light. You can see how this print might have been a precursor to that, a way of working out how to turn space and architecture into something emotional and dynamic. I think of the Futurist Umberto Boccioni, who also tried to portray figures in motion. But unlike Boccioni, Feininger finds a way to capture movement while still leaving space for a little mystery.