The Prisoner (Der Gefangene)

1918

Made in the aftermath of World War I, this woodcut of a man behind bars, perhaps a prisoner of war, evokes physical and psychic trauma. Christian Rohlfs’s bold, jagged lines emphasize the man’s emaciated body and the force with which he grips the bars.

Rohlfs died one year after the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich, in which modern works, including his own, were exhibited by the Nazis to defame and mock the art and artists.