Prentbriefkaart aan Willem Bogtman 1925

This Prentbriefkaart aan Willem Bogtman was probably made with ink on paper, and at first glance, it looks almost like nothing – but isn’t that how we start sometimes, with almost nothing? It’s just the back of a postcard, but look at those handwritten lines. You can see the character of the writer, in the way the ink bleeds a little. There is a dark boldness to the writing. Imagine the hand that moved across the page, the pressure applied, the rhythm of thought translating into script. The stamp and postmark add another layer, each a mark of time and place, a kind of abstract composition in themselves. I always think of Cy Twombly when I see marks like these. Roland Holst wasn’t exactly making art like Twombly, but there’s a shared sensibility, a love of the imperfect, the spontaneous, the everyday mark that holds more than it seems. Art’s like that, isn’t it? A conversation across time, a whisper from one hand to another.