Vrouw met koe (Woman with Cow) 1918

Bart van der Leck made this painting, *Vrouw met koe* – that’s *Woman with Cow* – with what looks like crayon or gouache. I really love how he’s broken down these figures into a series of simple geometric shapes. The cow and woman are there, but they’re also not. It’s like they’re hiding in plain sight. I can imagine Van der Leck thinking a lot about how to get at the essence of form here. There is a real joy in his distillation of colour. Look at the blue – those rectangular blocks have volume and weight. They sit up at the top of the painting like an idea. It’s not hard to see his relationship to other artists. The painting has a kinship with Piet Mondrian’s abstractions, but it’s also totally its own thing. Van der Leck reminds us that paintings don’t come from nowhere, they’re part of a much bigger conversation. And he shows us how abstraction can get at something deeply felt.