Huizen op bergheling 1924

Leo Gestel made this drawing of houses on a mountainside in 1914, using pencil, black chalk and charcoal on paper. The restrained palette emphasizes the process of artmaking. It’s all about the different marks and how they build up the image. Check out the surface texture. Notice the soft, smudgy quality of the charcoal and chalk, especially in the mountains and the shadowed areas around the buildings. You can almost feel the artist’s hand as he blended and layered the marks to create depth and form. Look at the individual strokes that define the edges of the buildings and the rough texture of the rocks. The repetitive marks, like the small, vertical lines that create shading, add a sense of rhythm and movement to the composition. Gestel’s interest in simplification and abstraction relates to artists like Cezanne who looked at landscape as geometric shapes. Gestel invites us to appreciate the beauty of simplicity, and the power of mark-making as an ongoing conversation about how we see and represent the world around us.