Day three hundred and nine: A very quick day trip back to the NY print fair brought me face to face with what might be my favorite German Expressionist woodcut. I’d never seen it before, but when I was going through a box of prints I immediately liked. By Erich Heckel, and titled “Wolken” (meaning “Clouds”), it depicts what appeared to me at first as an exploding volcano beyond a sea. Then I noticed a white bird in the upper center and fish-like creatures in the waves. Later I began to see that the whole “cloud” above the water seems to form a giant dragon, with its angry head to the right looming to the right. This sketch is a poor copy, is nowhere near as dynamic as the original, but it captures, I think, the general composition. With only a handful of known impressions, I’m unlikely to see this print again, except perhaps someday in a museum.
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