Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1900 - 1914

Alidor Delzant wrote this letter to Philip Zilcken in Paris, on the 15th of July 1902, using ink on paper. Imagine him there, carefully forming each letter, each word a brushstroke of thought. What was going through his mind as he penned this note? Was it a casual missive or something deeply felt? You know, the way the ink bleeds slightly into the paper gives the writing a soft, almost dreamlike quality. It's like each word is both there and not there, present and fading away, simultaneously. Perhaps the artist was thinking about how to continue his painting practice. It reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly’s scribbled paintings or even some of the automatic writing experiments of the Surrealists. Artists have always been in conversation with each other, riffing on each other's ideas, pushing the boundaries of what art can be. I love the idea of art as this ongoing dialogue, this exchange of energy and ideas across time.