Untitled (Three Mourning Women) 1947

Hans Jelinek made this untitled woodcut, Three Mourning Women, and I just love the shapes he coaxes out of the medium. There's something so immediate about the way Jelinek works. It's like he's wrestling with the wood, letting the knife lead the way. Look at the sky, how it swells with these dark, curling tendrils. Each cut feels deliberate, carving out these figures from the raw material and defining the space around them. The light and dark areas are so stark and dramatic. It's as if he's searching for a way to capture the essence of grief, the weight of sorrow. The deep blacks and the crisp whites create a sense of tension, a feeling that something profound is happening just beneath the surface. It reminds me a little of Käthe Kollwitz, but maybe with a touch more jaggedness. It’s like he’s searching for some kind of emotional truth in the grain of the wood itself. For me, it really opens up the emotional possibilities in art.