Bamboe 1920

This is ‘Bamboe’ by Johannes Frederik Engelbert ten Klooster. It's a black-and-white print, probably a woodcut or linocut, and the artist's hand is so evident in every mark. I can imagine Klooster wielding his tools, carving away at the block, each line a deliberate act of shaping and defining. It’s a dance between intention and accident, where the material itself—the grain of the wood, the resistance of the linoleum—guides the artist’s hand. Look at how the textures vary: the dense, almost velvety blacks of the bamboo stalks versus the delicate, feathery strokes that suggest leaves and foliage. What was he thinking about as he created the scene? Was he thinking about the formal arrangement of shapes and lines, or was he reflecting on the feeling of being in that landscape? The rhythm of the composition, the contrast between light and dark – all remind me that artists are constantly building on each other's work. Each mark contains a lifetime of seeing, feeling, and responding to the world. It’s all about ambiguity and the possibility of multiple interpretations.