Old Age 1950

S. Edelson made this black and white woodcut, Old Age, at some point in the mid twentieth century. Woodcut! You can feel the resistance of the wood in the image's forceful lines. It’s stark, with deep blacks and a pale, almost ghostly ground. It's a process of pushing and pulling, carving away to reveal. The two figures here are so present. I’m really drawn to the male figure's beard, this kind of dense, scratchy texture that feels almost protective. Look at the way the artist uses these small, almost frantic lines to suggest detail, shadow, and the weight of time. There is a building with smoke coming out of it on the left, this reminds me that no one exists in a vacuum. I'm reminded of the German Expressionists, like Kirchner or Heckel, who used woodcut to express intense emotion and social critique. Like them, there’s a rawness, an immediacy here, as if the artist is trying to grab hold of something fleeting and essential about human experience. What a statement for someone who died so young.