This series of quick sketches was made in 1995, during Weidenbaum’s time at the Academy in Antwerp. A group of students met for several weeks to draw together from a model in a studio. The model changed pose every thirty seconds – hence the expressive moments on the paper. A selection of these drawings has been preserved.
Today the drawing as an autonomous work of art has somewhat faded into the background, yet small drawings in pencil or charcoal have been sought after by collectors in our regions since the seventeenth century – artists included: Rubens bought work from his contemporaries and is known to have reworked drawings by his colleagues.
At the Academy in Antwerp, drawing was given great importance, entirely in the tradition of nineteenth-century academicism. Under the influence of Sam Dillemans, Weidenbaum immersed himself in it: drawing as the carrier of an inner need for expression, here through drawing from the live model. Anatomy classes were central, as a scientific basis for drawing and for understanding the proportions of the human body. Through the sketch, he explored line, plane and space within the drawing.
