Studier efter gravmæler 1932 - 1935

Niels Larsen Stevns made these sketches after tombstones with pencil on paper. The soft grey pencil is perfect for conveying the artist’s preliminary thoughts, it invites you to consider art making as a process. The marks are tentative, searching, and provisional. In the upper sketch, the figures holding the canopy above the deceased are rendered with a beautiful simplicity. The monumentality of the tomb is suggested with an economy of means. Look at the circular motif in the sketch below, the cross in the middle of the circle suggests the artist’s interest in the symbolic potential of simple forms. The roughness of the drawing feels very modern and reminds me of Guston’s late drawings. Like Guston, Stevns embraces the open-ended potential of art to generate new forms of seeing and thinking.