Uitgebloeide zonnebloemen 1912 - 1940

Dick Ket made these sunflowers, Uitgebloeide zonnebloemen, on paper with pencil. It's hard to date exactly when it was made, but we can see the care that went into the process. The flowers are past their prime, right? They have these heavy heads all drooping down. The artist hasn't given us the bright colours we might expect of sunflowers. Instead, there's a muted palette – this ground, this brownish paper, and then the grey pencil lines on top. You can really see Ket's hand in it. He's not hiding anything. It's all about the texture, the surface, and the way the light catches those pencil marks. There’s a beautiful ambivalence, here. Take the top left bloom, for example, it's a jumble of lines, almost like scribbles. But somehow, they come together to form this perfect shape, this dying head. Think of Giorgio Morandi's still lifes. In both artists' oeuvres, there's this similar feeling of quiet observation, of finding beauty in the everyday. Ultimately, it’s this very ambiguity that makes art so powerful, right?