Het lege erf 1979

Harrie Gerritz made this print called 'Het lege erf', or 'The Empty Yard', at an unknown date, and it kind of reminds me of children's book illustration, but also a deconstructed painting. The palette is sparse, almost ghostly - there is a muted yellow, a pale blue and the black stripes of what might be a fence post. The marks feel light, and spontaneous, almost as if the artist has drawn directly onto the printing plate, letting the immediacy of the gesture shine through. The cow is barely there, just a faint green outline, like a memory fading away. I love how Gerritz embraces simplicity, stripping away the excess to reveal the bare bones of the scene, reducing the farm to just a few essential elements, a house, a cow, a fence. This makes me think of Joan Miró, another artist who knew how to distill the world into its most basic forms. Art, like memory, often thrives on ambiguity and suggestion, inviting us to fill in the blanks and create our own stories.