Besiegt 1920

Wilhelm Kuhnert made this drawing, called Besiegt, with graphite on paper. It’s the kind of drawing where you can really see the artist figuring things out as he goes. There’s a dead stag and one that's very much alive and yelling! The drama is all in the mark-making; Kuhnert uses these tiny, precise lines to build up the forms, almost like he’s knitting them together. The graphite feels soft and powdery, but the lines are sharp, capturing the texture of the deer's fur. I love how Kuhnert uses these marks to create depth, especially in the foreground, where the grass seems to bristle with life. There is such a contrast between the living and the dead. Look at the single curving line describing the mouth of the stag in the foreground; it howls with grief and rage. I see echoes of Delacroix in Kuhnert’s romanticism, that same sense of raw emotion. But while Delacroix would use big, sweeping brushstrokes, Kuhnert is all about detail and delicate rendering. It's fascinating to see how different artists can approach similar themes with such different techniques, and in doing so, create new ways of seeing and feeling.