Brief aan Mien Cambier van Nooten Possibly 1939

Dick Ket wrote this letter to Mien Cambier van Nooten on November 20th, 1938, in some kind of ink – maybe iron gall, judging from the way it’s faded and browned over time. I can only imagine Ket hunched over this page, his mind racing as he poured out his thoughts. I can see him pausing, pen in hand, wrestling with his words. Look at the loops and swirls of his handwriting, the way the letters bunch together, then stretch out again. There's a rhythm to it, almost like a musical score. I wonder what he was like, what he wanted to tell his friend, what the mood was. This letter reminds me of the work of Cy Twombly, with his scribbled lines and fragmented words, or even the dense, chaotic surfaces of Anselm Kiefer. All these artists, across different times and places, are engaged in this ongoing conversation, each one building on the ideas of those who came before. To me this letter feels like an ancestor of abstract expressionism. It's a testament to the power of painting and writing as forms of embodied expression.