Brief aan Willem Bogtman Possibly 1939

This letter, composed in Amsterdam on February 3, 1939, by someone at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten to Heer Bogtman, uses the typewriter as its brush. The text cascades down the page, an urgent message, carefully constructed. I imagine the writer, hunched over the keys, each strike an act of deliberate creation. What’s on their mind as they relay news of furniture safely arrived? The letterhead becomes a kind of frame, grounding the composition. I think about what it was like to choose that particular font or how the texture of the paper feels beneath their fingers. You can see it’s an official correspondence but the signature at the bottom of the page breaks with formality. The letter reminds me how language, like paint, can carry feeling and meaning, how each word, like each brushstroke, contributes to an ongoing conversation about form, function, and expression.