Ontwerp voor raam in het Noordertransept in de Dom te Utrecht c. 1934

Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst made this design for a window in the Utrecht Cathedral using chalk, and you can see the marks so clearly! I imagine him there in his studio, wrestling with this idea, the chalk grinding against the paper, a real physical engagement with the material. Look at those deep reds and browns – they feel so grounded, so earthy. It's like he's trying to capture the weight and history of the cathedral itself. You can see the influence of stained glass, but there’s also something modern in the way he's broken everything down into these angular shapes. It reminds me a little of some early cubist experiments, where artists were trying to show all sides of an object at once. Holst is doing something similar here, fragmenting the image to create a new kind of visual experience. Artists like Holst build on what came before, pushing the boundaries of what painting can do. For me, it’s another reminder that art is a conversation across time, and that there's no single way to see or interpret the world around us.