Figurstudier 1864 - 1942

Niels Bjerre made this pencil sketch, Figurstudier, at an unknown date. Isn’t it interesting to consider an artwork which is ostensibly a study, a kind of preparation for something else? Look at how Bjerre returns to similar shapes and forms, exploring subtle variations in pose. His lines are tentative, searching, never quite settling, each mark a record of his ongoing process. Notice how in the bottom right of the image a cluster of darker, more frenzied marks coalesce into a more solid form. In comparison, the other figures are only lightly suggested, open and permeable to the blankness of the page. There’s something very intimate about this work, like sneaking a peek into the artist’s notebook. This reminds me of Philip Guston, another artist who made drawings that feel like records of thought, where the beauty lies in the incomplete and the unresolved. Because, after all, aren’t we all just figures in a study?