Ontwerp voor een tapijt met floraal patroon 1922

This is a design for a carpet with a floral pattern, made by Dirk Verstraten, likely on paper with some kind of coloured pencil or gouache, and it's a riot of geometric form! I love how the grid becomes part of the design, dictating these jagged edges and pixelated forms. It’s like Verstraten is building up the image square by square, letting the structure of the grid determine the shape of these quasi-floral forms. The palette is so restrained and earthy, with these muted reds, blues, and greens. It’s like he’s not trying to hide the process at all, but rather letting it all hang out, bare and vulnerable. I'm reminded of the work of Anni Albers or even Hilma af Klint - all these women who were working with pattern and abstraction, trying to find a new language for art. It is such a beautiful thing to think about how the process itself can be the point, that art is not just about making something perfect but about the journey of making.