Staande naakte vrouw c. 1920

Simon Moulijn made this drawing, Staande naakte vrouw, with pencil on paper. It’s all about mark-making in this piece. You can see the artist’s hand so clearly. It is so immediate and transparent. I just love seeing the process in action like this. Look at the way he uses hatching to describe the fall of light on the model’s back, and then how those marks dissolve into this sort of scribbled frenzy as they move towards the edges of the form. It's like the figure is emerging from a cloud of pure energy. The texture is so palpable, almost like you could reach out and feel the pressure of the pencil on the page. There's a real sense of play here, of the artist experimenting with different ways of describing volume and space. It reminds me a bit of Rodin’s drawings, that same kind of restless energy and obsessive focus on the human form. Art is a conversation and an exploration.