Bandontwerp voor: Charles M. van Deventer, Hollandsche bellettrie van den dag, 1901 1901

Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries made this design for a book cover in 1901. I feel for the artist here, mapping out a grid, slowly, carefully, by hand. I know what it's like to work with painstaking precision, only for the end result to feel strangely stiff and formal. Maybe that was the intention, but I can't help but think of how the rigid structure almost seems to contain the more organic, fluid shapes of the floral details. You see how those curved forms push against the hard edges of the square, as if longing to break free from the grid that imprisons them? The interplay between structure and freedom here reminds me of the endless experimentation in Hilma af Klint's sketchbooks, and her own quest to find a visual language for spiritual ideas. It's all one big conversation, artists building upon each other's work and refining ideas across generations.