Udkast til "Kristus velsigner de små børn" 1937 - 1938

Niels Larsen Stevns made this pen drawing, a study for "Christ Blessing the Children," on paper sometime in his life, we don't know exactly when. What grabs me here is the raw energy of the line. It's like watching the artist think, each stroke a question, a search for form. You can almost feel the pen scratching against the paper, a direct connection between the hand, the eye, and the idea. Look at those looping lines suggesting faces, bodies – not trying to capture likeness, but more like feeling the weight of a crowd, the press of bodies, the abstract idea of togetherness. It is as though Stevns seeks a deeper truth than mere representation, and there’s a generosity in that kind of seeing, a willingness to embrace the unfinished, the uncertain. It reminds me of, say, a Cy Twombly sketch—not in style, but in its openness, its embrace of process over product. Both seem to understand that art is not about answers, but about the questions we ask along the way.