Zonder titel Schets van een reikende hand 1935 - 1936

This sketch of reaching hands was made by Leo Gestel, and it’s just a few inches tall. You can see the artist carefully built-up hatched lines to create tone and volume. I wonder if he was drawing his own hand, looking in a mirror? When I make a drawing I am never quite sure what I am looking for. But it’s a search, that's for sure, an embodied question. I want to know what the artist was thinking, what questions he was asking himself as he made marks on paper. Was he trying to capture a sense of movement, of gesture, of human connection? The hands are rendered with such precision and sensitivity, and the little marks, floating next to the top hand, add an element of mystery. I imagine him in conversation with other artists, those who came before and those who would come after. It’s all about the exchange of ideas. Each gesture, each stroke of the pen, is a response to what has been done before.