Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1913 - 1915

This letter was composed by Charles van Wijk in 1913, and judging from the look of it, he used a simple fountain pen and dark ink on off-white paper. It's all about the raw process of writing, a direct transcription of thought. The strokes, the varying pressure – all tell a story. Look at how some lines are thick with ink, and others fade, almost disappearing. It's like a dance across the page, a rhythm made visible. Notice the way the letters lean and connect, full of movement and personality. The ink isn’t uniform; it pools in places, creating darker accents, like the punctuation are making their point! This reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scribbled paintings, where the act of writing becomes a visual art form. Van Wijk’s letter, like Twombly’s work, embraces imperfection and invites us to find beauty in the spontaneous mark. Art is always an ongoing conversation, a back-and-forth, between intention and accident.