Head of a Girl 1924

Max Kaus made this etching, ‘Head of a Girl,’ without a specific date, using a printmaking process that leaves room for beautiful accidents. Look closely, and you’ll see the texture created by the acid biting into the metal plate, leaving a rough surface that catches the ink, giving the image a grainy, almost ghostly quality. The lines themselves are spare but deliberate. They define the girl's features with a kind of raw honesty. Notice the lines around her eyes, like scratches on the surface, they make me think of someone who’s seen a bit too much, too soon. But it’s the way the ink pools and gathers in certain areas, creating dark shadows, that really gets me. It reminds me that art isn’t just about representation, it’s about the physical act of making, the way the materials behave, and the unexpected things that happen along the way. Munch comes to mind when I look at Kaus, I think of how both artists understood the expressive potential of printmaking, its ability to convey a sense of vulnerability and unease.