Brief aan Henriette Wilhelmina van Baak Possibly 1930

This letter was written by Henriette Marie Gobée in 1930 using ink on paper. Look at this looping cursive, how the ink bleeds, creating a gentle, soft edge. I can imagine Henriette carefully composing each word, as if it were a delicate, almost haptic, act. I’m thinking about her state of mind, the gentle, caring way she formed each letter in her looping script. It seems Gobée took her time, with a delicate pen. It feels like she wanted to offer comfort, to make contact through the page. You can see the ink pooling in places, creating darker pools, little shadows, a gentle undulation to the surface, like the ebb and flow of feelings. This letter makes me think of Hilma af Klint and Agnes Martin who used their work as a way of making contact with others through feeling.