Zelfportret met bril en sik 1930

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita made this self-portrait with glasses and goatee in a woodcut, a medium that revels in stark contrasts. Look how the white lines carve out his face from the black ground! It's like he's building himself up, piece by piece, with each cut into the wood. The texture in the hair and beard is so tactile, so graphic, you can almost feel the gouge of the knife. And the glasses! They sit there, framing his eyes, turning them into these curious, observing circles. It's hard to ignore the way the white of the page pushes forward, creating a presence out of absence. This feels like a cousin to some of the German Expressionist prints I've seen. Artists like Kirchner, who weren't afraid to use the woodcut's intensity to convey something raw and unfiltered. In Mesquita's case, he shows us not just a face, but a process of self-construction, a dance between the maker and the made.