Bram VAN VELDE - Red Composition, 1978, gouache on paper

Bram van Velde : (1895-1981) is a Dutch painter and lithographer. Self-taught, he began painting at a very young age and at the age of twelve he worked as an apprentice in a Schaijk & Kramers interior decoration workshop in The Hague. The Kramers, a family of collectors and amateurs, are very sensitive to his talent and encourage him to continue along this path. They financed his work until about 1934. He began to make a name for himself in 1927 and exhibited works in Bremen. His brother Geer and himslef were admitted to the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Influenced by German expressionists, he was influenced by the fauves in Paris. He distinguishes himself from the French artists who arrived at the abstract style through impressionism and cubism. Weakened by the climate of war, van Velde stopped painting from 1941 to 1945. He regains possession of his art just after the war to perfect the mastery of his plastic language that would characterize his entire work. The painter's inner reflections will materialize a conception of the space that is intimately personal to him. In the 1960s, the artist moved to Geneva and experienced a certain recognition of his work, which led him to increase his number of exhibitions. Bram van Velde has developed his own plastic language which he has continued to work on until he has reached a very personal abstraction that he will describe as existential. For van Velde, reality has little importance, he does not see it, his painting is an "effort towards the invisible".