Brief aan Willem Bogtman 1922

This letter was written by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst in 1922 using pen and ink. I love how immediate it feels; you can just imagine the scratching of the pen on the paper, a direct connection to the artist’s thoughts. The delicate, almost frail quality of the handwriting gives it a deeply personal feel. The ink is faded in places, like a whispered secret that’s almost lost to time. Look closely, and you can see how the pressure varies, creating thicker and thinner lines, a kind of visual rhythm that echoes the rise and fall of speech. It’s like a drawing made of words. This reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scribbled paintings, where writing becomes gesture and meaning is secondary to the pure act of mark-making. It’s a reminder that art is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between artists across time and space, embracing ambiguity over any fixed meaning.