“Woodcut,” Kirchner wrote, “was the most graphic of the graphic techniques.” He and his peers in the Brücke group developed the medium’s capacity for bold, rough-hewn surfaces, cultivating a rawness that served their desire for emotional directness. Here Kirchner made crude cuts in the wood block to generate his awkwardly posed figures, which are dominated by the flat, black expanse of an oversized hat. The nudity of his subjects conveys an openness, a shedding of convention in search of a primal authenticity.
Gallery label from 2019
