Brustbild Maschka II 1916

Otto Mueller pulled this print of Maschka sometime before 1930, and I just love how inky and velvety it is. You can almost feel the litho crayon dragging across the stone. I can imagine Otto in his studio, trying to find the right line to capture Maschka’s likeness. Did he labor over it, or did it just flow out of him? He was part of Die Brücke, those German Expressionists wrestling with modern life. I feel like they never wanted to just depict the external world; instead, they looked for ways to show us the inner world. See how her eyes are closed in the print? Is she dreaming? I'm kind of lost in my own thoughts about her. There’s a real sense of the artist's hand at work here. It's like Otto is reminding us that we’re all connected through the act of looking and making. And that conversation keeps going, even now.