Brief aan Mien Cambier van Nooten Possibly 1939

This is a letter by Dick Ket to Mien Cambier van Nooten, from 1939, now at the Rijksmuseum. The page is filled with tightly packed handwriting, a dense field of marks made with what looks like a fine-tipped pen or pencil. There’s a real intimacy to seeing someone’s handwriting up close like this. You can sense the speed and pressure, the way the pen moves across the paper. Look how the looping strokes almost become abstract patterns, like a woven texture. I love the dark spot in the lower half that is probably a smudge of ink. It's almost like looking at a drawing rather than just reading words. You get a sense of the rhythm and energy of the person writing. It reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly’s scribbled paintings, where the act of writing becomes a form of abstract expression. It is a testament to the idea that even the simplest act of mark-making can be incredibly expressive.