Man met een snor en aureool, de handen gevouwen over een wandelstok Possibly 1943

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita drew this man with a moustache and halo, hands clasped over a walking stick, sometime before his death in 1944. There’s a definite graphic sensibility, the kind you find in someone super confident in their mark-making. The drawing is mostly bare paper, activated by a network of thin, wiry lines. Look at the face, how the halo is just a series of concentric circles that flatten and distort the space around his head. I see a face within that halo, too – like a memory, or a dream. I wonder what the date in the upper right signifies. I love the way Mesquita uses the bare minimum of lines to suggest form and volume. It’s almost like he's daring us to fill in the blanks, to complete the picture with our own imaginations. This drawing has a kinship with the work of Paul Klee. Both artists have this incredible ability to evoke entire worlds with just a few simple lines, inviting us to get lost in the ambiguity and mystery of their creations.