Exodus 1967 - 1968

Oskar Kokoschka made this print, Exodus, using stark lines that seem to scratch their way across the page. It’s as if each mark is a cry, urgent and raw, revealing the bare bones of the scene. The figures are rendered with such intensity, and in the foreground, the crowd is a jumble of faces, each etched with a different flavor of suffering. Look at the way Kokoschka uses lines to carve out their features—a deep crease here, a shadowed eye there. There’s one face in particular, towards the right, almost skeletal. It’s unnerving, but also mesmerizing. Kokoschka’s expressionistic style reminds me of Käthe Kollwitz, who also captured human suffering with so much honesty and power. What Kokoschka gives us is not just an image, but a visceral experience of human emotion and collective trauma. It’s a reminder that art doesn’t always have to be pretty; sometimes, it needs to be raw and unsettling.