Three Women 1913

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this drawing of three women with pencil on paper. It’s interesting to see how he has approached the figures, with lots of quick, angular lines. I can just imagine him drawing rapidly, trying to capture something of the women’s presence. The lines are quite scratchy and raw, which is so characteristic of the Expressionists. You can see how the quick, nervous marks make up the form. Look at the face of the woman to the right; Kirchner has used a few short lines to define her features, giving her a kind of edgy intensity. I feel like Kirchner might have been thinking about how to convey a sense of modern life and all its nervous energy, using the very act of drawing to show that. It puts me in mind of other artists such as Munch and Schiele, who were similarly trying to capture something about the psychological states of modern people through these sorts of gestural marks. It's a conversation, you know? We're all in conversation.