Kalenderbladen van april, mei en juni, met hagedis en vogels 1901

Theo van Hoytema made these calendar pages for April, May, and June without a specified year, and it feels timeless even now. The soft, muted green is what gets me first. It’s like looking through a gauze, or maybe the light filtering through leaves. You can see the process in the layering - lizards, flowers, numbers, birds, and even a ‘Hermit Soap’ ad peek through the design. It’s all screen-printed, so everything feels very flat and patterned, and yet the composition is open and airy. The images are both representational and abstract - the leaves and flowers look like real plants, but the way they’re arranged flattens them out into a decorative frieze. I love the two lizards at the bottom of the April calendar, curled up together as a base to the image, they look like they are sharing a secret. I am reminded of Walter Crane, who similarly looked to the decorative and graphic possibilities in the natural world, combining text and image. There’s a conversation happening here about how we see, how we mark time, and how art can be both useful and beautiful.