Christus Possibly 1930

Lodewijk Schelfhout made this print of Christus, etched into a copper plate, sometime before his death in 1943. Look at the concentration of marks used to build up the image. I can imagine Schelfhout bent over his etching plate, carefully layering these tiny lines to conjure up a face in profile. Look at how he suggests the fall of light with just a few, deftly placed marks; it reminds me of Rembrandt's use of light and shade. The stark simplicity of the print really strikes me. See how the bare minimum of lines creates this evocative image? Just a few dark lines, and the figure emerges from the nothingness. Etching has this amazing capacity to produce an image that feels both immediate and timeless, as if this image was meant to be all along and Schelfhout just found a way to make it appear. It is an intimate act, between the artist, the plate, and the acid, that slowly, slowly reveals an image. Artists are always in conversation with each other, across time.