Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1901 - 1918

This letter to Philip Zilcken was composed in writing, sometime around 1901 by Margaretha Roosenboom. The script is full of flourishes and looping forms; you can feel the hand moving quickly across the page. I'm struck by the way the ink varies in tone, fading and thickening as it moves. Look at the way the tails of the letters "g" and "y" drift softly into the paper. It's as if the words are breathing, expanding and contracting with the rhythm of the writer's thoughts. The words are contained within loose, uneven lines, a kind of permeable architecture. It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scrawled paintings, where writing becomes image. The whole thing has a fragile, ephemeral quality. Like so many artworks, it has a life of its own, speaking across time.