Tentoonstelling Voor de Kunst (De Ruiter) 1919

Bart van der Leck made this poster, Voor de Kunst, probably with gouache or tempera and stencils. I can imagine him in his studio carefully placing the stencils to create the blocks of colour that suggest forms. Look at the way the blocks of yellow, black, and angular shapes cluster together – like the shards of an exploded object – and the way they almost make a figure on horseback. What was he thinking, I wonder, when he made it? It’s as if he was trying to distill the essence of a rider into its most basic geometric forms. The red and blue horizontal bars give structure to the whole image and also add to the tension as these strong blocks of colour sandwich the rider. It reminds me of the work of Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement, with its emphasis on abstraction. These artists were in dialogue, riffing off one another's ideas. The conversation continues, and we artists keep learning from one another, even across time. Every painting is a thought process, a way of seeing, and there’s no one right way to interpret it.