Two Nudes in the Wood II 1926

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this painting, "Two Nudes in the Wood II", using oil on canvas. I just love how Kirchner throws us into this scene. The colors are bold and unexpected – greens and yellows for skin tones, dark blues for the woods. It’s like he’s not trying to copy nature, but to give us a feeling, an experience. Look at the way he defines the figures with thick, confident lines. The paint isn’t blended smoothly; you can see each brushstroke. That raw, almost aggressive mark-making really grabs you. Take the figure at the front. The way he’s used green to model the back and shoulder, then outlined it with pink, it’s so deliberate, so expressive. It feels like the painting is pushing back against the idea of beauty as something passive, something just to be looked at. Kirchner reminds me of Matisse in the way he uses color to create space and emotion. But where Matisse is often more about harmony, Kirchner is embracing the discordant, the unsettling.