Draak 1878 - 1943

This small etching of a dragon was made by Willem van Konijnenburg. It looks like a spontaneous sketch, like a preparatory drawing for a larger work. The image is built up from a loose collection of lines, a whole jumble of cross-hatching, which gives the dragon its form. There's a real tension between the image dissolving into abstraction and cohering into a recognizable form. Take a look at the dragon’s head, which has been described with a few simple, almost childlike lines. It's not particularly realistic, but it is expressive. The process here seems really important. It’s all about observation and the way the image is built up; nothing is laboured, it’s more about the doing. I'm reminded of the drawings of Paula Modersohn-Becker, who also prioritised a kind of raw, unfiltered way of seeing. Art, for both of them, seems to be about experimentation and the process of enquiry, rather than a fixed idea of perfection.