Seated Female Nude 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this ‘Seated Female Nude’, drawing with a stick of charcoal, sometime in the early twentieth century. It’s all about the touch, really. Look at the charcoal: dense black lines define the model’s outline, fading into a softer grey to indicate the form. The texture feels almost velvety, doesn’t it? Gestel coaxes a real range of tone and texture from the charcoal, giving the figure a sculptural presence. The way he shades the inside of the thigh, for example, those quick, scribbled marks that make up the darker areas, lend the drawing a lovely sense of depth. It's like he's figuring it out as he goes along. Gestel's work shares some of the modernist concerns around form, perhaps like Picasso, but there's also a vulnerability in the sketchiness, a sense of the artist seeking something beyond mere representation. In art, the conversation never really ends; it just keeps evolving.