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Bram Van
Velde was born October 19, 1895 in Zoeterwoude, not far from Leyde. Abandoned by
his bankrupted father, Bram Van Velde grew up in terrible poverty. Self-taught,
he was at a very early age attracted to painting, and at twelve years old he
began an apprenticeship at Schayk & Kramersâ design studio in La Haye. The
Kramer family encouraged him in his art, receptive to his talent as both
collectors and art amateurs. They would become his patron until 1934. With the
outbreak of WWI, Bram was obliged to become the family breadwinner. He worked
as a house painter and decorator while registering at Maurithuis La Haye to
copy the ancient masters. In 1922,
the Kramers encouraged Van Velde to travel with their financial support. He
visited Munich before settling north of Brême, at Worpswede, where he
encountered a colony of Expressionist artists. He then distanced himself from
his former profession, with its bourgeois ties, so as to open himself to
modernity. A liveliness of pigment, a gestuality of line now entered his work.
He subsequently left Worpswede in favor of Paris, painting bouquets of flowers
in brilliant colors, an as well as views of Chartres and its suburban
landscapes. His paintings then pushed toward aestheticism, rendering itself to
a two dimensionality that would be distinctive of his mature work. His career
was moving forward, and in February 1927 he headed to Brême to exhibit his
works. He was admitted along with his brother Greer to the Salon des Independents
in Paris. There he became close to Paul Guillaume and at that time discovered
Matisse and the Piano Lesson, an encounter that would be essential for his
work. Influenced first by the German Expressionists, in Paris he opened himself
to the influence of the Fauves. He worked until he achieved a personal
abstraction to which he would hold true. In a series of compositions of fruit
beside a window, he abolishes the distance between interior and exterior,
between conceived forms and descriptive elements that here enter a system of
contours and rings suggesting interwoven surfaces. He distinguishes himself thus from French
artists who achieved their abstract style through Impressionism or Cubism. On October
6, 1928, Van Velde married the German painter Lilly Klöker. In the wake of the
Great Depression, living conditions worsened, and the couple decided to move to
Spain. Shortly after, however, came the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Lilly died and Van Velde repatriated back to Paris, moving in with his brother
Greer. He then met Marthe Arnaud, a former missionary to Zambize, who would
become his companion. She owned African sculptures and cloths that would later
influence the artist. Through a mutual friend, he later met Samuel Beckett.
They became close while both pursuing their own paths, strict and without
compromise; they would both gain celebrity after WWII. Just like Beckett, Van
Velde felt that art was not a means of expressing oneâs interior life. The only
thing that mattered was to achieve a result at once perfect and autonomous. It was in
1939 that the artist created his own plastic language, with three large
gouaches that would found the autonomy of his art. Tried by the terrors of war,
Van Velde stopped all pictorial activity fro, 1941 to 1945. After the war, he returned
to his art in full control of the plastic language that would characterize the
ensemble of his work. The interior tensions within the painter materialized a conception
of space that was imminently personal. He liked to introduce fluidity into his
work that most often displayed a luminous transparency. His first personal
exposition debuted March 21, 1946 at the Galerie Mai in Paris, with twenty-five
paintings â almost the entirety of his work. It was a failure. In 1947, he
signed with Parisâ Galerie Maeght, and in 1948 he exhibits at Kootz in New York
â once again a commercial failure, despite a favorable critique from Willem de
Kooning. Van Veldeâs career as a book illustrator began in 1949 with four
lithographs designed for Marthe Arnaudâs Enfants
de ventre. In 1951, Van Velde painted four large-format oil paintings in
which he breaks away from the object. The painting was at once a surface as
well as a divided space. With another absence of buyers at Maeght, he stopped
painting for a year, thus leading Maeght to break their contract with him in
1952. Jacques Putman, whom Van Velde met in 1949, would take on the artist from
that point on. In 1958, Franz Meyer
organized Van Veldeâs first museum exposition, his first retrospective at the
Kunsthalle in Bern. The couple Bram-Marthe left Paris the same year. The
following year brought the death of Marthe, killed in a car accident. While in
Geneva on Christmas of 1959, Bram met Madeleine, who would then become his new
companion. It was not
until the 1960âs, when he moved to Geneva, that the artist would come to know a
certain notoriety. After 1961, the rhythm of his expositions accelerated. A
film by Jean-Michel Maurice is made about his life. In October 1964 the young
author Charles Juliet visits him for the first time. Van Velde moved between
Paris and Geneva, where he began to paint before settling there in 1967. The
following Prisunic etchings under the direction of Jacques Putman marked the
beginning of a production of lithographs that would reach 400 numbers before
his death. In 1973 he painted a number of large gouaches at La
Chapelle-sur-Carouge that would be the last âsavageâ use of color in his work.
Aimé Maeght then welcomed him back to Galerie Maeght. Bram
collaborated on the art review TROU, for which he created an original print to
illustrate its one hundred copies. Afterwards he painted his last small format
works. Bram Van Velde died on December 28, 1981 at Grimaud, near Saint-Tropez.
His friend and mentor Jacques Putman, who had supported him after his departure
from Maeght and for the rest career, died on February 27, 1994 in Paris, and
rests close to the artist. |