Paar 1912

Christian Rohlfs made this image, Paar, with gouache, watercolor and charcoal. I love how immediate the mark-making is in this piece. There's a real sense of the artist working quickly, capturing a fleeting moment. Notice the way Rohlfs uses these dark, bold lines to define the figures and the furniture, almost like a sketch. Then, he fills in the shapes with these washes of color—that sunny yellow and ruddy brown. It's like he's building up the image in layers, letting the colors bleed and blend. The materiality of the piece is so important. You can almost feel the roughness of the charcoal, the way it catches on the paper. And those areas of thin, watery gouache. It all creates this sense of texture and depth. It reminds me a little of Emil Nolde, especially in the way he uses color to convey emotion. But Rohlfs has his own unique voice, a kind of raw energy that's really captivating. For me, this painting is a reminder that art is a conversation across time, artists responding to and building on each other's ideas, creating something new in the process.