Glas-in-loodraam met een man met schep 1921 - 1942

This stained-glass design featuring a man with a shovel was made by Reijer Cornelis Joseph Godefrooij. It’s a blueprint really, made to guide the fabrication of the actual stained-glass work. The colour palette is understated, mostly blues, greens and earth tones. Look at the way the composition is structured. The design is broken up into many different fragments, like a puzzle, each section suggesting a piece of coloured glass. See how the figure is constructed from these blocks of flat colour, with thin lines defining the contours. I'm interested in the faceting of form; these planes of muted colour are not unlike those used by Picasso and Braque, or even, later, David Hockney, to build a pictorial surface. It's like the design is trying to suggest volume whilst remaining resolutely flat. It is an unusual and interesting piece.