Bandontwerp voor: N.S. Ljeskow, De onsterfelijke, 1965 before 1965

Here's a cover design for N.S. Ljeskow's 'The Immortal' made in 1965 by Karel Thole. Look at the way Thole approached the portrait with a sense of architectural structure, almost as if constructing a building, a kind of modernist ruin of a face. It's like he's thinking, "How can I take all these bits of graphic information and pull them together into something that still feels like a living, breathing being?" I wonder if Thole had a back-and-forth process, layering the shading to add depth and volume to the face with this angular approach to form, reducing it to the barest essentials, yet it's so compelling. In terms of painters who come to mind, maybe Picasso and Braque, who were constantly pushing the boundaries of representation, or Stuart Davis’s playful geometry. These artists aren't just depicting the world. They're actively reimagining it.