Kerst- en nieuwjaarswens van meneer en mevrouw David Bingham c. 1950 - 2000

This is an illustration of the Secretariat Building, United Nations, in New York. It’s rendered in monochrome and was probably printed for a Christmas and New Year greeting card. I can almost feel the artist at work, squinting through the cold, trying to capture the monumentality of the building and the pulse of the city. Look at the sky, those cloudy strokes suggesting movement and drama, and how that contrasts with the sharp, vertical lines of the building itself. I wonder if they were thinking about architectural renderings or perhaps drawing inspiration from modernist photography? The cross-hatching must have taken hours, with each stroke contributing to the overall texture and depth of the image. You can see a conversation happening here, a dialogue between precision and spontaneity, between the man-made and the natural. It reminds us that every artistic gesture is a form of inquiry, an attempt to make sense of the world through observation, feeling, and imagination.