Hoofd van een man met een bril c. 1916

Reijer Stolk made this drawing of a bespectacled man, with a pencil, sometime before 1945. I find the lines here so intimate, like a spider’s web spun from graphite. Look at the way the strokes build up to describe form, a density of hatched marks give way to negative space that brings the image to life. You can see the artist building up the image, feeling around, layering the strokes to find the subject, almost like he is constructing the image from within. You get a real sense of the hand, the speed and pressure of the line. And then there’s the glasses - a series of looping scribbles like cartoon eyes, or some kind of abstract, surrealist form. This is very reminiscent of Picasso, especially his rapid, linear sketches. Ultimately, the beauty is in its incompleteness, it shows us the art of becoming.