Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1927

This letter, ‘Brief aan Philip Zilcken’ was written in 1927 by Ferdinand-Sigismund Bac with a nib pen on paper. I can only imagine the controlled movements, the delicate balance between pressure and lightness. I wonder what the paper felt like under his hand as he wrote. Bac is inviting his friend to visit, right? You can almost feel the artist’s desire for connection. It's right there in the gentle curves of the letters, the even spacing, and that consistent ink density. I find myself thinking about other artists who've used text in their work – Cy Twombly, for example. Like Twombly, there’s a certain vulnerability in Bac's script, a sense of something deeply personal being shared. It shows how artists, even when writing letters, are in an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting, or in this case writing, becomes a form of embodied expression, open to multiple interpretations.