Brief aan Willem Bogtman 1924

This letter by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst, likely from 1924, is all about the hand—its movement, pressure, and rhythm across the page. I imagine the artist hunched over a desk, the pen scratching and gliding as thoughts took shape. I like the intimacy here, the casual tone between friends. You can sense Holst’s mind at work, wrestling with ideas and trying to articulate them with precision. I wonder what Willem Bogtman thought when he received this letter, and how this correspondence fits into the artists’ broader creative dialogues. These handwritten lines remind me that artists are always in conversation, borrowing, riffing, and responding to each other across time. Painting, like writing, is a form of embodied expression, full of ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple readings.