Voetboogstraat of de Handboogstraat te Amsterdam, gezien vanaf het Spui 1907

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of Voetboogstraat or Handboogstraat in Amsterdam, with graphite, from the vantage point of Spui. It’s a dance of vertical marks, a kind of searching, like the artist is feeling his way through the scene. You can see Breitner thinking through the architecture of Amsterdam with the side of his pencil. There's such an immediacy and freedom to it, a way of seeing that's both intimate and detached. It makes me think about what it means to really look at something, to let it unfold before you. It’s like he’s not just drawing a street but capturing a feeling, a moment. The tonal range is really limited; everything’s compressed into this narrow band of greys. This makes me think of other artists who use constraint as a way of finding freedom. Like Morandi with his bottles, or Agnes Martin with her grids. Breitner takes something as ordinary as a street scene and turns it into something transcendent. It's this kind of conversation, this back-and-forth between artists across time, that keeps painting alive. It is such a great example of how a simple gesture can communicate so much.