Vrouw, een jongen en een meisje maken bossen van takken

This photogravure by Nestor Stekke shows a mother, son and daughter making bundles of sticks, and the muted aquatints that Stekke coaxes out of his materials feel as though they are slowly emerging from the earth. The beauty of photogravure is the way it renders light and shadow, that velvety texture which gives the impression of objects materializing from the paper. The subtle shifts in tone, from almost-white to near-black, are reminiscent of a charcoal drawing. There’s a gorgeous luminosity to this, particularly in the highlights around the children’s faces, set against the dense, inky backdrop. There’s something very raw about how Stekke captures his subjects, a closeness to nature that you see echoed in the work of Pieter Bruegel. He, too, had an eye for the everyday, finding beauty in the mundane. Ultimately, both artists remind us that there is profundity in the simplest of gestures.