Gargamelle 1939

This pencil drawing titled Gargamelle was made by Henk Henriët in 1939. The artist builds up a fantastical scene with delicate, tentative marks, layering tone to create a sense of depth and texture in the figure's voluminous form. Look at the way Henriët uses smudging and hatching to describe the soft folds of fabric and flesh. The surface is alive with the pressure of the pencil, with areas left intentionally vague and unresolved. It’s like Henriët is thinking through the image as he draws, allowing the process to guide the composition. There is a great contrast between the almost frantic, scribbled lines around the base of the drawing and the comparatively smoother rendering of the central figure. I'm reminded of James Ensor, whose drawings also embrace the grotesque and the absurd. Like Ensor, Henriët uses art to explore the boundaries of imagination and to question the status quo. There's a sense that fixed meanings are less important than the openness of interpretation.