Twee kussende stellen 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this drawing of kissing couples with pencil on paper sometime in his life. Look at the nervous, searching lines, like he’s trying to grasp the form, but it keeps escaping him. I can feel Gestel wrestling with the subject: How do you capture the intimacy of a kiss, that merging of two beings? You can see he's redrawing, layering one attempt over another. There's a tenderness in the way he renders the figures, almost like he’s holding them gently on the page. It reminds me of other artists who use line to explore the human form, like Picasso or Schiele, but Gestel has his own unique voice. What’s so interesting about painting, or drawing, or any kind of art making, is how artists are always in dialogue with one another, across time and space. They keep the conversation going. They inspire one another, and in turn, they inspire us.