Ontwerp voor raam in het Amsterdams Lyceum 1927 - 1929

This is a design for a window in the Amsterdam Lyceum by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst, made using chalk and pencil. It's all about breaking down the image into these geometric, almost cubist forms. It gives the figure and the background a kind of shattered, ethereal quality. Looking closely, you see how the chalk is layered to give depth and texture. It's not just flat color; there's a real sense of the material, the grain of the chalk on the paper. The artist uses line to create cells of color, it's a method that reminds me of stained glass production. See the way he's rendered the folds of the figure's robes? Each plane is carefully considered. It all builds up to this monumental yet fragmented form. It makes me think a bit of early Mondrian, before he went full abstract, when he was still wrestling with figures and landscapes, trying to find the underlying structure of things. With both artists, there is an understanding that art is not just about what you see, but about how you see.