Verblühte Tulpen 1914

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made these 'Verblühte Tulpen', or 'Faded Tulips', with oil paint, and it's the colours that pull me in first, you know? That saturated yellow background, like a stage-set sunrise, really makes those blues and greens vibrate. There’s a kind of organized chaos to the brushstrokes, they're so present and visible. I can almost feel the texture of the canvas underneath. Look at how Kirchner uses these thick, bold strokes to define the shapes of the tulips and leaves. The paint is applied so directly, so you can really see each mark, each decision he made. It's like he's inviting us to witness the whole process of making the painting, start to finish. Kirchner was part of Die Brücke, a group of German Expressionist artists. Like his contemporaries Emil Nolde, or even Edvard Munch, Kirchner was interested in the messy, complicated nature of human feeling. I like how this painting embraces that kind of ambiguity, where beauty and decay can coexist.