Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1916

Vittorio Pica dashed off this postcard to Philip Zilcken sometime around 1916. It's a mix of the official and the intimate; on one side, the formal stamp of Venezia and on the other, a personal message scrawled in elegant handwriting. I imagine Pica, pen in hand, leaning over a desk, the world outside pressing in, yet here he is, pausing to connect. There's something so human in that impulse, right? To reach out, to share a thought, a moment. And the act of writing itself—the way the ink bleeds into the paper, the loops and swirls of the letters—it's almost like a dance. Each stroke a gesture, a feeling made visible. I bet he’s looking at the streets of Venice thinking about the way it feels to live. It reminds me that we're all just trying to make sense of things, to find our place in the world, and sometimes, the simplest gestures can mean the most. I think of other artist friends and how they might respond to this. It is about keeping the conversation going, across time and space.