Compositie met gezichten en zwanen 1923

Bernard Essers made this print, "Composition with Faces and Swans", using black ink. Look at those faces, how they cluster together as though caught in a moment of drama. I imagine Essers, driven by emotion, carving away at the block. He must have felt the resistance of the material beneath his hands, and the need to negotiate between control and accident. It can't have been easy. The swans flying into the dark sky, the masked figures, the face looking directly at us, all create a sense of mystery. What's it all about? I wonder if Essers himself knew. Maybe he was thinking of Edvard Munch and his haunting visions of the human condition. Perhaps he saw himself in the tradition of printmakers like Käthe Kollwitz, who used their art as a means of social commentary. Whatever the case, Essers has produced something unsettling, intense, and unforgettable. Isn't that what we want from art?