Brief aan Max Wilhelm Carl Weber en Anne Antoinette Weber-Van Bosse Possibly 1919

This is a letter to Max Wilhelm Carl Weber and Anne Antoinette Weber-Van Bosse by August Allebé, written in 1919. It's not painting with a brush, but it is painting with the pen, and the letter is a kind of drawing or a sort of building, from thought to word to paper. I can imagine Allebé in a flow state, as the letter unfolds, line after line, the words almost like brushstrokes on paper. The pressure and speed of the pen must have varied, like an action painting, as his thoughts moved quickly from one idea to the next. It seems from the writing that he was going through some turmoil. There's a rhythm and texture to the handwriting, with darker and lighter marks creating a sense of depth and movement. It reminds me of Cy Twombly's scribbled paintings, where the act of writing becomes a form of abstract expression. The written word is really another kind of mark making. One artist's handwriting or typography can inspire another’s sense of form. It all ends up circulating in the great art soup.