Briefkaart aan Jan Ponstijn 1914

Leo Gestel made this small postcard to Jan Ponstijn with pen, brush, and watercolor, imagining a nativity scene amidst the first world war. You see the three kings kneeling to pay tribute, but instead of baby Jesus, there's a bomb in the manger. I feel for Gestel, who seems to be painting his way through something truly unspeakable here. Imagine him, his hand hovering, the pen scratching to make that jagged black outline, the brush loaded with thin washes of color. Is the paint allowed to drip, or carefully placed to create those ghostly rows of soldiers on either side? The sky full of foreboding zeppelins? It's gestural, fast, and loose – like so many painters trying to make sense of chaos. The choice of such humble materials contributes to the emotional rawness of the work. I see echoes of other artists grappling with the same anxieties, from Otto Dix to Max Beckmann. And, like them, he lays bare the disjunction between religious hope and the horrors of war. It reminds us that artists are constantly in dialogue, responding to each other across time, building on each other's visions. And that painting, even now, remains a vital form of expression.