In Hürde (In der Hürde)

Gerhard Marcks

"In der Hürde"(In the Hurdle) was done in 1922, the period when Marcks was at the Bauhaus teaching ceramics. In 1920 he was encouraged by fellow Bauhaus teacher Lyonel Feininger to try woodcut as a medium. Many of his woodcuts from this time featured modernist compositions of animals, especially cats. The edition sizes were not noted.

With this woodcut Marcks created an abstracted farmyard, enclosed by movable fences (hurdles). In the foreground cows are being milked in an open area with a path. In the background a cow is being led past a structure, while in the upper left corner a Brahma bull stands.

A Bauhaus teacher, Marcks used many of the woodcut techniques of his contemporaries, such as Feininger. The lines are flattened and linear, the "primitive" composition is without depth or three point perspective and is created with a variety of simple shapes.