Johanna 1920

This is Conrad Felixmüller’s ‘Johanna’, and it's an etching, made by incising lines into a metal plate. I’m immediately drawn into the angular face, a network of sharp, dark lines that define the planes of her features. Imagine the artist, bent over the plate, carefully cutting each line. The concentration, the physical effort! There’s something intense in the way he's carved out the eyes. They seem to look right through you, holding a weight of feeling. The lines are so expressive, they remind me of the woodcuts of German Expressionists like Kirchner. I wonder about Johanna. Was she a friend, a lover, or just a model? What was it like to sit for this intense artist? The hands, so carefully rendered, suggest a kind of quiet strength. It's as if Felixmüller isn't just showing us what she looks like, but trying to capture something of her spirit, her inner life. This feels like such an intimate act of image making.