Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1902 - 1925

This letter to Jan Veth, penned by Cornelis Winkler in 1902, is a painting in its own right. I can see the artist hunched over the page, wrestling with thoughts and feelings, rendered visible through ink. The handwritten script, with its elegant loops and hurried strokes, becomes a landscape of language, capturing the push and pull of communication. The words gather like fluid gestures, each one building upon the last to create a terrain of meaning. I wonder what was at stake at the time of writing. It reminds me of Cy Twombly, whose calligraphic paintings blurred the line between writing and abstraction. Winkler's letter echoes the same spirit of mark-making, revealing the embodied act of communication. Like painting, writing becomes a way of charting our inner world, leaving traces of our thoughts and emotions for others to decipher. Every stroke and flourish speaks volumes, even across time.