Vrouwenhoofd en een gezicht 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this drawing, Vrouwenhoofd en een gezicht, with pencil on paper and it’s all about exploring the push and pull of representation. I mean, what is a face, anyway? The beauty of a drawing like this lies in its directness; you see the artist thinking through the act of mark making. Gestel uses the pencil to map out the contours of the face, but then he adds another eye, floating free, as if to say, “perception is multiple, not singular.” The texture of the paper itself becomes part of the image, the tooth of it grabbing the graphite and creating a shimmering surface. Look at the way the lines around the jaw are confident and sure, then dissolve into a kind of scribbled shorthand at the neck. It’s like Gestel is saying, “I’m interested in the idea of a face, but not so much in rendering every detail.” It reminds me a bit of Picasso's early cubist portraits, which also aim to capture the essence of a person through fragmented forms. Art's not about answers, but about opening up possibilities.