Bram van Velde Quotes

Dutch painter (1895-1981)

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Bram (Abraham Gerardus) van Velde (October 19, 1895 – December 28, 1981) was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored abstract painting style. He is often seen as member of the 'Ecole de Paris' but his work resides somewhere between Expressionism and Surrealism; it evolved in the 1960's into an expressive colorful Abstract art.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Velde, Bram von

Native Name: Bram (Abraham Gerardus) van Velde

Alternative Names: Abraham Gerardus van Velde • Abraham Gerardus Van Velde • Bram Velde • Bram Van Velde • Abraham Gerardus Velde • bram van velde • Bram van de Velde

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About Van Gogh.. a man who is on fire, a torch. His sincerity is absolute. His best painting is the grain field where he kills himself. There we find ourselves at the border of the art of painting. We cannot go further.

I feel myself tied to life. To the immensity and complexity of life. Each painting is an impulse towards life.

The artist is living a secret that he has to make manifest

I met Beckett at my brother’s [ w:Geert van Velde, also an abstract painter] place. That was a Big meeting [circa 1938, in Paris], in capital letters. It was before war started, life was still normal. That time I was very lonely. We saw each other often. Before the war he had published already something, but his fame came in 1953. We never spoke about his work. He was a taciturn man. Sometimes a word escaped from his mouth. Sure, a word you would never forget. It would stick in your head... This friendship with Beckett is the most important experience in my life. He was fully alive for my way of working. What he could express in words, I did with my paintings.

I don’t set out to speak a comprehensible language. But my language is authentic.

Each of my paintings is a cycle. It’s like existence, life. They are always in motion.. .If they were fixed and static, they would be false.

At is taking risks.. ..a sincere attempt to achieve the impossible, the unknown.

The beauty other people create is not for the artists. Artists have to live alone.

The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes.

There is only the present. A painting is an instant of time that has escaped oblivion.

When you are working, you are so far away and so absorbed, it's inevitable that you fall into a vacuum when you stop.. ..every time when I finish a painting, I always have to wait to get my strength back before I can begin another.

If these gouaches [Bram van Velde recently made] live at all, it is because they are true, they derive from life. They are born of the unknown – and not of habit or know-how, or intention, or of some recipe.. ..there comes a time when serious work is no longer an effort. When demanding work of that kind no longer tires you.

I'm now in a big working period, which takes me up so much that hardly anything of me remains. I have never been strong in theories and this becomes worse and worse. My work should give me satisfaction, and that is about life and death.. .Several paintings full of life and beauty arose again and give me the courage and joy to proceed on the road. There are also several paintings in which I am involved for less than half, discharges in a short time, which have existence for a while, but will not reach shaping.

Art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what’s in life... Art wants to give back everything what’s in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator.

Painting is an aid to vision. It turns life, the complexity of life, into something visible. It reveals things that we don’t know how to see.