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

From Wikidata (CC0)

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To be true, you have to take the plunge, to touch bottom. But most people want to be in control. They fear the worst. You can’t control anything. What you have to do is let yourself be taken over.. .All the paintings I have made, I was compelled to make. You must never force yourself.

I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing.

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.

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.

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.

I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find.

I paint the impossibility of painting.

Part of your work feels as clear, it gives you a sense of liberation or beauty and you recognize it as necessary pavements. You are thus in a sense ready. In the other part of your work this is not the case. Therein is the hidden development, which is the true essence of art... the higher purpose, the pursuit forward that art automatically calls. The unclear part of your work needs to progress (stopping is no option, is no life, no art) and it is clear when by working with head and heart, the real step forward has been achieved.

Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.

However terrible it is, the thing never involves any sadness

When you get to the bottom, you discover that there is no room for pride. That’s what I paint.

Mondrian.. .The constructivists?.. .They had certainties. They wanted a stable basis to work on, but I’m afraid that that was enormous arrogance on their part. Nothing is stable and no certainties are possible.

I am in a thousand pieces. Painting somehow makes me whole.

An artist’s life is all very fine and moving. But only in retrospect. In books.

What the eye can see won't get us very far. And what it can see is so limited, so restricted. But a gouache or an oil painting can be seen at a glance, can take in a whole world at a single glance.