Liggende naakte vrouw en een vliegtuig c. 1916

Reijer Stolk made this drawing of a nude woman and an airplane, probably in the early 1940s, with pencil on paper. There's a casualness here, a sense of being in process, that's really appealing. Look at the mark-making, how the artist is building up the image through layers of scribbled lines, not aiming for photorealism, but something more evocative. The paper itself becomes part of the texture. It's like the drawing is breathing. I keep coming back to the contrast between the solid, almost classical rendering of the reclining nude, and the lightness of the airplane, floating in its own little box below. It reminds me of Picasso, or maybe Guston later on - the way they embraced different styles and registers within a single work. It’s this kind of playfulness that keeps art alive, refusing to be pinned down.