Roundism – 28-10-22

Suze Robertson

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Roundism – 28-10-22’ follows my cubist interpretation of Louise Brooks’ facial features. The latter was done in colored pencil. However, I had a good reason to do this one in matt graphite only. Last Sunday I visited Paronama Mesdag in The Hague, Netherlands. There was this exhibition of Suze Robertson’s art works with which I was not yet very familiar. She was an innovator, being able to see cubist planes in figurations. As such she paved the way for people like Mondriaan. Surely there were many attractive paintings but I do admire her drawings the most. I must confess I don’t really like her approach in rendering aforemeant planes with thick black contour delineations. I recognize the possibilities of adding black and white ligaments in order to support planes of color though. Regarding many of her works I think the black simply was too dominant.

Singularity Again

Nevertheless I do admire her boldness, expressed in an era where hardly any woman could freely paint what she wanted. So a lesson learnt when it comes to daring attempts. Just like her I want to break up figurations into attractive planes. That makes me realize I have been standing on the shoulders of artists who did exactly that before me. This time I wanted to see how my theories on singularity would look on Ingres paper. Therefor I happened to have some old reference pictures of an old model shoot with Julia Gómez Avilés. One was particularly good for such a project.

Flexy Julia

Perhaps I was a bit worried about the grain the Ingres paper with regard my roundism style. For some reason I always have liked the smooth gradients that make that style really stand out on Bristol paper. Then again, those who never experiment and move one, never will innovate and only repeat themselves. Flex-woman Julia had this smashing pose fit for the task. She bended over backwards and made a kind of cross with her body. I saw the opportunity to counterbalance all these curves with horizontal and vertical structures. To wrap this one up I decided to enforce some linear structures contrasting the massive dark blocks. In a way it shows my love for the line again and I even like the Ingres grain showing through!

Pitt Graphite Matt pencil (Faber-Castell) drawing on Fabriano Ingres paper (21 x 28.2 x 0.1 cm)

Artist: Corné Akkers