On the Shore c. 1929

Rolf Nesch pulled On the Shore from a plate, leaving us with this image of figures by the water’s edge. Look at the stark contrast between the dark figures and the light background. I can imagine Nesch working on the plate, scratching and etching to create these lines, a bit like automatic writing. There's a woman with her hands behind her head, maybe she’s just come out of the water, and two other figures wading in. The figures are quite abstract, just gestural outlines really, which kind of throws me back to early Expressionism and artists like Kirchner. It's like a memory of a beach, maybe from Nesch's time in Norway. I love how the scratchy lines give the whole scene a kind of restless energy. It’s like he's capturing a fleeting moment, or a half remembered dream.