Studie af rygvendt mand siddende i en klapstol 1930 - 1936

Niels Larsen Stevns made this drawing of a man in a folding chair with graphite on paper. It’s kind of a jumble of lines. I wonder if he was on the move, sketching quickly, trying to nail down the way the chair's structure intersects with the figure. There’s a real tension between the scratchy, searching marks and the solid geometry of the chair. See how some of the lines are really dark and confident, while others are light and tentative, like he was feeling his way around the subject. That mark-making creates a feeling of movement and instability. It reminds me a little of Giacometti's drawings – that same feeling of trying to capture something fleeting and ephemeral. Artists are always in dialogue with each other, whether they know it or not, building on what's come before, riffing on old ideas, and pushing things in new directions. It’s like a big, ongoing conversation.