Gezicht op Italiaanse huizen in bergachtig landschap 1936

Reijer Stolk’s Italian landscape is sketched with colored pencils, using a naive style and sweet, soft colors. I can almost feel Stolk applying the colors, one by one, in multiple layers to construct the landscape with the houses. See how the soft marks build up to give shape to the trees, and how the strokes follow the direction of the roofs of the buildings? You get the sense that Stolk is really trying to capture the feeling of a place, rather than its precise details. It’s hard not to read the image as a metaphor for the artist's inner state, a calm, sheltered place. The artist died young, in 1945, so you can only imagine what he might have been thinking when he made it. It has an otherworldly, peaceful aura. Artists are always talking to each other, even across time. Stolk would have known the Fauvist landscapes of Derain and Vlaminck and it’s interesting to see how he has digested these influences and created something so personal and unique. Painting is ultimately a form of expression and an embodied act. There is not one single definitive reading, and that’s okay.