Skelet van een paard 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this drawing of a horse skeleton with crayon and charcoal. You can see the hand of the artist in the assertive and searching lines. It's so immediate, you know? I can imagine him, bending over the paper, trying to figure out the relationship between the exterior form and the interior structure, the skeleton, the bones, and the soft tissue. I bet he was looking at a horse skeleton—or maybe he was just thinking about one. Gestel leaves a lot of the paper showing, which gives it a feeling of lightness, like a sketch, but the dark outlines, the smudges, and the red crayon give the form some weight. The marks are so raw and unrefined, almost childlike. I can feel the pull of earlier artists like Van Gogh. It’s like, how do you capture the essence of a thing? How do you make it alive, even in its skeletal form? That’s a conversation artists have been having for centuries.