Landschapsschets 1872 - 1939

Egbert Schaap created this landscape sketch with graphite on paper. At first glance, what strikes you is the stark simplicity and skeletal structure of the composition. The artist reduces the landscape to its barest essentials, primarily using straight lines to denote form. Look at how Schaap uses these minimal lines to define space. The stark, angular lines of what appears to be a building stand in contrast to the more fluid, organic shapes of the trees. This contrast creates a visual tension, a play between the constructed and the natural. The sketch destabilizes our expectations of landscape art by resisting traditional pictorial depth and detail. There’s no attempt to mimic reality, but rather an exploration of basic geometric forms to evoke a sense of place. What we're left with is a structural investigation of form and space, prompting us to reconsider the basic elements that constitute our perception of landscape. The art challenges fixed ideas about how we see and represent the world around us.