Ex libris van J. van der Ager 1906 - 1945

This is Reijer Stolk’s 'Ex libris van J. van der Ager,' a monochrome woodcut print. Right away, you get a sense of the artist’s hand, the cutting and carving; it's right there in the stark contrast of black and white, light and shadow. You see this solid dark figure set against the white, and it's all geometry, straight lines, angles, zigs and zags. The figure is broken up, abstracted, stylized, but the suggestion of a person is still there, just. The shapes are puzzle-like, each one cut to fit the next, a dance of positive and negative space. And look at those letters, also chopped and angled, forming a kind of border around the composition. The whole thing feels like a code, a secret message embedded in a simple design. Stolk clearly owes something to the German Expressionists and their woodcuts, like Kirchner for example, but there’s also something very personal and unique happening here. It’s a conversation, a kind of push and pull, between tradition and individual expression.