Portret van George-Eugène-Benjamin Clemenceau 1934 - 1936

Leo Gestel made this portrait of George Clemenceau with pen on paper, and looking at it, I can almost see the artist’s hand at work, scratching and scribbling away. The whole thing is made up of these tiny, energetic marks, a real frenzy of lines that somehow come together to form a face, a solid three-dimensional head. I imagine Gestel, totally absorbed, letting the pen dance across the page, each stroke building on the last, almost like he's carving into the paper. It reminds me of some of Picasso’s ink drawings, where he’s just letting loose, trying to capture the essence of a person with as few lines as possible. But here, Gestel is building, the marks forming tiny squares and triangles and somehow creating depth and shadow. It’s like he's not just drawing a portrait, he's building a personality out of pure energy. And that big mustache! It’s like a cloud, full of bluster. It’s all a reminder that artists never work in a vacuum. They’re always riffing off each other, responding to the past, and pushing things forward.