Café in Davos 1928

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted Café in Davos, using oil on canvas with a kind of urgency we see in the Fauves. He uses color and line to suggest a world that’s slightly off-kilter. Check out the green planes that stand in for light. Or are they just shapes? Kirchner’s laying down marks with a brushy, broken texture. It’s like he’s wrestling with the paint, trying to capture a feeling more than a scene. The colours are dissonant, a little jarring, aren't they? And those heavy black outlines – they flatten the space, making everything feel immediate and present. See how the faces are masks, not portraits. It’s this mood that connects Kirchner to other expressionists like Edvard Munch. They're both showing us the world through a filter of anxiety, a world where colors clash and faces are distorted. Of course, art doesn’t have to be pretty. Sometimes, it's more interesting when it’s a little messed up, when it asks us to feel something uncomfortable.