Gezicht op een Italiaanse stad aan het water c. 1937

Reijer Stolk made this view of an Italian waterside city with colored pencil. The soft, almost tentative marks layer together to create a hazy vision. It feels so process oriented, like he’s building the image up, bit by bit, with a kind of tender attentiveness. Look at the water – it’s not just blue, is it? There are layers of grey and brown in there too, giving it depth and a kind of murky realness. And the buildings, they’re not just blocks of color; each one seems to have its own unique shade, a slightly different hue of yellow or ochre. There’s a real sense of light here, but it’s not overly dramatic. It’s more like a quiet, pervasive glow. There's something about the way the mountains in the background are rendered, with these almost scribbled lines, that reminds me of some of Alfred Kubin’s landscapes. It's like Stolk is tapping into a similar vein of expressive line work. Art is always talking to art, it's an ongoing conversation through time. The beauty of a piece like this lies in its openness, its willingness to embrace ambiguity.