Death with a Coffin c. 1917

This woodcut is by Christian Rohlfs and it's called Death with a Coffin. You can see the artist has used a whole range of marks—thick, thin, long, short—to carve away at the wood. I can imagine Rohlfs at his workbench, wrestling with this image. What was he thinking as he gouged out the black spaces, leaving only a few lines to suggest the figure of Death? Look at the way the ribs are rendered! It’s just a series of white dashes, yet they convey so much about vulnerability, about the fragility of the human body. I love how Rohlfs embraces the stark contrast between black and white. It reminds me of Käthe Kollwitz, another German artist who used woodcuts to express powerful emotions. Artists like these remind us that art isn't just about pretty pictures, it's about grappling with the big questions of life and death.