Brief aan Willem Bogtman Possibly 1922 - 1927

This letter, "Brief aan Willem Bogtman," was penned by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst, back in 1922. It's all about process, right there in the pen strokes. The ink is thin, almost watery, as if Holst dashed this off in a hurry. You can almost feel him scratching away, the pen dancing across the page. The lines vary from thick to thin, the opacity of the ink shifting with the pressure. Look at the way the words crowd each other, some almost illegible. It’s not about perfect legibility; it’s about getting the thought down, raw and unfiltered. It reminds me of Cy Twombly, that same sense of urgency and improvisation. It’s like he’s sketching with words, the letter itself becoming a kind of abstract composition. Holst is perhaps less wild than Twombly, more controlled. The act of writing, like painting, becomes a way of thinking, of wrestling with ideas and emotions in real-time.