Brief aan Mien Cambier van Nooten Possibly 1937

This letter to Mien Cambier van Nooten was made on paper by Dick Ket. Just look at the way Ket has packed the handwriting together. It’s as if he’s trying to fill every bit of space, and it’s so rhythmic, like a field of wheat swaying in the wind. The paper is slightly off-white, the lines are written in a dark ink. It's so dense that the words almost become abstract shapes and marks, like an all-over painting. Notice how the loops and lines of the writing create their own kind of texture, a physical presence on the page, even though it's all just ink. It's easy to imagine him hunched over this letter, his pen scratching away. You could compare Ket to artists like Cy Twombly, who also transformed handwriting into highly personal and expressive forms. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that art is really just about a conversation, and how one artist's work can spark something new in another.