Twee paarden 1891 - 1941

Curator: Leo Gestel rendered this graphite drawing, "Two Horses," sometime between 1891 and 1941. It's currently held at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: There’s a certain unfinished energy to it. The lines are so spare, so economical, yet they capture the powerful essence of these animals. It’s like looking at an echo of a horse rather than a detailed depiction. Curator: Absolutely. Gestel's work often navigated the emerging currents of abstraction. Given the time period in which it was created, that aligns him with broader anxieties of modernization where even traditional forms were disrupted by changes to societal relationships. How might these animals' representation serve a cultural understanding of labor at this moment, given they become obsolete through mass automation? Editor: Well, horses are laden with symbolism. Power, freedom, even untamed passion. The simplified forms lend the animals an archetypal quality. Almost like equine figures one might find painted on cave walls, or from friezes recalling earlier Classical forms in modern media. There's a primal energy about these two, despite the relative calmness they have, close in their physical space. Curator: But consider the implications of that "untamed passion." In Gestel's Netherlands, we find a society still reckoning with rapid urbanization. These horses, confined to a sketch, might represent both a yearning for a lost pastoral world and a patriarchal insistence to domesticate what defies control, with inevitable limitations and, frankly, abuses. Editor: That’s a powerful reading. Perhaps that is exactly where it pulls us in–an exploration of what happens to the symbolism of work horses from Classical, and Early Modern use to today? The interplay of strength and vulnerability is certainly palpable through the image here. Curator: Gestel has left us with an intimate look at two animals caught at a point of both reverence, with links to Classicism, and historical tension as they transition into abstraction. Editor: A powerful visual meditation on symbolism and changing times that leaves me thinking deeply.