Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken en Henriette Wilhelmina van Baak Possibly 1913 - 1926

This is the back of a postcard to Philip Zilcken and Henriette Wilhelmina van Baak, written and sent by Fenna de Meyier around 1913. Imagine de Meyier sitting down to write this postcard, probably with a fountain pen and dark blue ink, looping and swirling her way through pleasantries. She’s clearly communicating information, but the marks of the pen create something so much more, don’t they? The handwriting feels really personal, like an intimate, physical connection to the artist. It's all in Dutch, of course, but you don’t need to know Dutch to get it. It kind of reminds me of Cy Twombly, the way the words blur into image. It seems like she is very intentionally placing the words on the card, thinking about the design and balancing the stamp and postmark in her composition. She’s not alive anymore, but in a way, the painting has a life of its own now, too. I think painters everywhere continue to have conversations with each other, across time. Each artwork is a new iteration, a new expression building on the past and inspiring the future.