Initiaal L 1909

Bernard Willem Wierink made this Initial L in 1909, and you can see it today at the Rijksmuseum. It's such a small thing, almost a note, but it has a real graphic punch. The way Wierink crafted this letter—it’s like he’s building with shapes, not just drawing a line. Look at the crispness of the black ink against the pale paper; the contrast gives it such clarity, doesn’t it? It’s as if he’s thinking about the letter not just as a form but as an object, a block. I love how the curves of the letter ‘L’ are echoed in the little circles alongside. It’s playful, like he’s improvising with the alphabet. This piece reminds me of Hilma af Klint, though her work came later; there’s a similar urge to find meaning in form, a kind of symbolic architecture. In the end, it's the intimate scale of the work that gets me. It feels like a glimpse into Wierink's private world, a space where letters become art and process becomes the point.