Portret van een onbekende man 1919

Willem Adrianus Grondhout made this unnamed portrait with pencil on paper, and it's all about line, line, line. Look at how he builds up form with these scribbly, almost frantic marks. There's a real energy in the way the pencil moves, like he’s trying to capture not just a likeness, but a feeling, a fleeting impression. The marks around the collar and jacket are lighter, less defined and more gestural; then we move to his face, it becomes a dense network, a thicket of tiny strokes. It’s like he’s mapping the topography of this guy’s face, every wrinkle, every shadow. I love the way the line describes the moustache, that one loopy strand is so perfectly imperfect. It makes me think of other portrait drawings like Klimt, but Grondhout's is raw and uninhibited, he's not trying to be elegant. To me, it’s like he's saying, hey, art is a process, it's about exploration, and it’s okay to leave the traces of that journey visible.