Freddy wijst naar twee mannen in een deuropening before 1948

Hans Borrebach made this drawing of Freddy pointing at two men in a doorway with pen and ink. The washes of grey and blue are laid down so quickly that it feels like an annotation or sketch, like something dashed off in a notebook. Borrebach’s process feels quite intuitive; the quick, thin lines and washes build up the scene, capturing a sense of atmosphere and light with a sense of immediacy. Look at the man in the bowler hat, how the dark ink of his suit pools and bleeds, creating a sense of depth. The artist is not precious about it; he lets the ink do its thing, which gives the image a kind of casual elegance. The flat, unmodulated white of the paper gives the whole thing a strangely unfinished, almost dreamlike quality. There’s something about the graphic economy and focus on character that reminds me of George Grosz. Borrebach is brilliant in his own right, of course, offering us an ambiguous slice of interwar life. It feels very of its time, which is maybe why it still has the power to intrigue.