Arbeiten in Flussbett der Etsch 1906

Reijer Stolk made this bustling image of workers toiling in the riverbed of the Etsch, probably as a woodcut or linocut with watercolor. What strikes me is the bold, graphic quality and the almost playful way he renders this scene of labor. I see a real dance of colors here. The blues and reds jostle against yellows, and there’s something almost Fauvist about the way color is used to describe form, but also to disrupt it. Look at how he builds up the riverbed. The way he stacks those stones and pebbles, each outlined and filled with a different hue, reminds me of the freedom with which Picasso or Braque treated the object in space. And, look at the way the architecture is described. It's so matter-of-fact, but then it all gets a bit wonky and wobbly, as though the very structures are swaying to the rhythm of the river and the workers below. It reminds me that art isn't about perfect replication but the joy of reinterpreting the world. Much like Van Gogh's expressive brushwork, Stolk’s approach here embraces feeling over precision.