Kalenderblad voor juni 1904 1903

Anna Sipkema made this calendar page for June 1904, and it’s a sweet example of early color printing, probably lithography. Look at how the purple, yellow, and green interlock in the botanical forms that frame the grid. It’s like a game of figure-ground, where the positive and negative spaces dance together. The colors aren’t blended; they’re laid down in distinct areas. That gives it a graphic punch, a kind of clarity that feels very modern. It’s like she’s saying, "Here are the pieces, now you put them together in your mind." It's all about the process of seeing, breaking down the image into its components, and then reassembling it in our own way. I like to think of it like she's orchestrating a little visual symphony, a reminder that artmaking, like life, is about finding harmony in the everyday. It reminds me a bit of Hilma af Klint, who was doing similarly groundbreaking work around the same time, exploring the spiritual through abstract forms. And, like Klint, Sipkema’s calendar invites us to see the world in a new light, where beauty and meaning can be found in the simplest of things.