Pitbull Terrier 1912

Moriz Jung made this striking Pitbull Terrier print sometime between 1900 and 1915. It's got this great handmade feel, doesn't it? The way Jung uses simple black lines to define the dog's muscular form is really something. See how he varies the thickness of the lines to suggest volume and shadow? And that orange-y background with its primitive brickwork pattern, it’s all about the process, the directness of the hand. It's like each mark is a little decision, a little experiment. I love how the collar is depicted with tight, almost frantic lines, contrasting with the smoother rendering of the body. It gives the dog a certain tension, a kind of contained energy. This reminds me of some of those early Expressionist woodcuts, Kirchner or Heckel maybe, where the roughness of the cut is part of the emotional punch. It's this raw, unpolished quality that makes the image so compelling, suggesting art as an ongoing conversation across time.