Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1902 - 1912

This letter was written by Max Liebermann to Jan Veth in 1912. It’s a flurry of looping lines, jumping up and down the page. You can feel the nib of the pen pressing into the paper, each word a dance of pressure and release. Liebermann’s handwriting is so distinctive; I can imagine him hunched over his desk, his mind racing as he tries to capture his thoughts. What was he thinking when he put pen to paper? Maybe he’s in a rush, trying to get all his thoughts down before he loses them. Or maybe he’s just enjoying the physical act of writing, letting the words flow out of him like a painter letting the paint flow from the brush. Painters are constantly in conversation with each other, both across time and in their own moment. We look to each other for inspiration, for validation, and for new ways of seeing the world. And even though handwriting is a more direct form of communication than painting, it still has that same quality of embodied expression. It embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings, all those wiggly shapes, personal and alive.