Notities 1890 - 1946

This page of notations was made by Cornelis Vreedenburgh using pen and pencil. Look closely, and you can almost feel the scratching of the nib, the bluntness of the graphite, and the quiet but urgent need to record. I can imagine Vreedenburgh, out and about, making quick calculations and jotting down fleeting impressions—maybe about the light hitting a building, or the cost of materials? He’s squeezing information onto the page in a kind of visual shorthand, a mix of numbers, words, and sketchy lines. There’s an energy to the page, with its overlapping marks and erasures. The red lines zig-zag across the surface. They appear to be corrections, as Vreedenburgh worked through his ideas, refining his calculations, making sense of the world through notation. This feels less like a finished work and more like a site of experimentation, a place where the artist is actively thinking and problem-solving. It reminds me of the notebooks of artists like Cy Twombly or even Leonardo da Vinci, where the act of writing and drawing becomes a form of thinking. We see them constantly evolving and pushing the boundaries of their practice.