Zwevende vrouw met trompet 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this drawing, ‘Zwevende vrouw met trompet,’ with pen and ink. Look at how the ink bleeds into the paper! I can imagine Leo bent over a table, quickly sketching with fluid, broad strokes. He must have been thinking about figures in motion, the kind that float, fly or maybe even fall through space. The dark washes give the figure weight, somehow grounding her, while the thin lines suggest movement. Is she an angel, a muse, or just a woman with a trumpet doing her thing? That trumpet is a call to action, a burst of sound made visible. Gestel was part of a generation that was deeply affected by war, and he struggled to develop a visual language that would express the changing times. He painted in many different styles, and it looks like he absorbed the lessons of Cubism and Fauvism. His art reminds me that artists are always responding to their world and to each other, reaching out and speaking across time.