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Lot Essay
Around 1913 Leo Gestel, Piet Mondriaan and Jan Sluijters were the three most influential modern painters in Amsterdam. They became increasingly dissatisfied with the two dominating artistic trends of the time, the stylized Idea painting and The Hague School. Instead, they wanted to depict the essence itself in its profoundest and not its most apparent image. The pure shining colours of French impressionism, post impressionism, and fauvism and later forms of cubism and futurism, were their examples.
Leo Gestel found his own modern, almost futurist style in 1912 and subsequently executed, according to A.B. Loosjes-Terpstra, his best work around 1913. She writes: "1913 was een byzonder vruchtbaar jaar (...). In het voorjaar van 1913, resumeerde de schilder, in een grote overzichtstentoonstelling [bij Kunstzaal Schüller en Eissenloeffel in Den Haag], zijn gehele tot dusver doorgemaakte ontwikkeling. Het meest extreem van stijl waren hier de bonte mozaieken van zijn futuristische bloemstukken ...." (1913 was a very fruitful year. In the spring of 1913, the painter summarized, in a large retrospective exhibition, his complete development untill then. The most extreme in style were the many-coloured, mosaics of his futuristic flower pieces).
In the present work gestel is clearly influenced by the formal-abstract side of futurism. "Futurisme werd voor hem in de eerste plaats: de mogelijkheid tot dynamisering van kleur, vorm en ruimte." (Futurism primarily ment for him: the possibility to dynamise form, colour and space). It was with this kind of work that Gestel exhibited with the first international promotor of futurism, Herwarth Walden's Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon in 1913 in Berlin (A.B. Loosjes-Terpstra, Moderne Kunst in Nederland 1900-1914, Utrecht 1987 (first ed. 1959) p. 143 and 144).
Leo Gestel found his own modern, almost futurist style in 1912 and subsequently executed, according to A.B. Loosjes-Terpstra, his best work around 1913. She writes: "1913 was een byzonder vruchtbaar jaar (...). In het voorjaar van 1913, resumeerde de schilder, in een grote overzichtstentoonstelling [bij Kunstzaal Schüller en Eissenloeffel in Den Haag], zijn gehele tot dusver doorgemaakte ontwikkeling. Het meest extreem van stijl waren hier de bonte mozaieken van zijn futuristische bloemstukken ...." (1913 was a very fruitful year. In the spring of 1913, the painter summarized, in a large retrospective exhibition, his complete development untill then. The most extreme in style were the many-coloured, mosaics of his futuristic flower pieces).
In the present work gestel is clearly influenced by the formal-abstract side of futurism. "Futurisme werd voor hem in de eerste plaats: de mogelijkheid tot dynamisering van kleur, vorm en ruimte." (Futurism primarily ment for him: the possibility to dynamise form, colour and space). It was with this kind of work that Gestel exhibited with the first international promotor of futurism, Herwarth Walden's Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon in 1913 in Berlin (A.B. Loosjes-Terpstra, Moderne Kunst in Nederland 1900-1914, Utrecht 1987 (first ed. 1959) p. 143 and 144).