Hoofd van een vrouw, mogelijk An Overtoom 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this study of a woman's head, possibly An Overtoom, with pencil on paper, and it looks like he was really working through something. The pencil lines are tentative, searching, as if Gestel is feeling his way around the form, trying to capture not just a likeness but maybe a feeling, too. What strikes me is the incompleteness of it all. It feels like a glimpse into the artist's process, like we’re seeing the evolution of an idea right there on the page. There are several faces stacked on top of each other, giving a sense of volume and depth with the bare minimum of materials. Then down in the corner, there's a discarded head, resting horizontally. I love that. Gestel was part of that whole early modernist scene, so you could imagine him hanging out with folks like Mondrian or even Picasso, all wrestling with how to represent reality in new ways.