Hand met fakkel en ruiten 1939 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this drawing, "Hand met fakkel en ruiten," with pencil, chalk, and charcoal on paper. Look at the way he's carefully constructed the image. You can see all of the preparatory lines. I can imagine Gestel hovering over the paper, working through various iterations, figuring out the composition. What did the hand originally look like? It's a fascinating look into the artist's process. Gestel is thinking about the painting like architecture. He's arranging elements like a formal problem. The marks feel almost like a dance across the page. With each stroke, the drawing shifts, breathes, and comes more to life. It reminds me of some of Mondrian's early, more figurative works where you can sense him feeling his way into abstraction. Artists are always talking to each other across time, aren’t they? They are in continuous exchange, sparking new ideas and ways of seeing.