Melancholic Head
1927 - 1928
Talk about a misleading label! Scratched into the bottom of this print is 'La jolie' (The Pretty One), but the woman staring back at us is a jagged, melancholic mess of shadows and anxiety. Her face is distorted and sad, while a ghostly hand looms behind her clutching a stem. This is German Expressionism at its finest: the artist isn't interested in making you feel good, but in ripping open the surface to show raw, ugly emotion. While the metadata attributes this to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a giant of the movement who died in 1938, the handwritten date '1994' and edition number '19/20' at the bottom reveal this is a much later print—proving that this intense, scratchy style still had fans decades later.
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