Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1923

This letter to Philip Zilcken, was written in pen on paper. What strikes me is the way the blue ink almost melts into the page, like watercolor bleeding into wet paper. It’s as if the words themselves are dissolving, becoming less about the message and more about the act of writing. Look at the loops and swirls, the way the letters lean and dance across the page. There’s a rhythm here, a flow of thought made visible through the hand’s movements. You can almost feel the writer’s breath, the pauses and surges of their thoughts as they poured onto the page. It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scribbled paintings, where the act of writing becomes a kind of abstract expression. With Twombly, you get the sense that meaning is less important than the energy, the pure physicality of mark-making. The letter is similar, it invites us to get lost in the texture and the rhythm of the writing, to experience the act of communication as a deeply human, deeply imperfect process.