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Lot Essay
Bram van Velde did not participate in movements, was not involved in debates with colleagues, and did not publish articles or books. His career developed in isolation.
Throughout his life Van Velde remained sceptical about his position in the world and about the significance of his own work, and it was out of this insecurity that such powerful works as the present lot were born. "The world is a mystery that my paintings help me to penetrate. What I feel is too strange, too violent for me to capture in a word or thought. It demands to appear and I paint." ( Bram van Velde, quoted in Exh. cat. Knoedler Gallery, New York 1968). A fundamental link can be drawn between the existentialism that became the 'lifestyle philosophy' of Post-War Paris and the work of Van Velde. Van Velde's intimate friend and supporter, the playright, Samuel Beckett recognised the insufficiency of words for understanding and elucidating the visual arts, and spoke of the 'curious effect' that van Velde's work had in inducing silence upon its spectators. Beckett wrote of a sense of the incomplete in his works, not distinctly of an unfinished quality but of an unfinishable situation.
Composition from 1963-1964 does, typically for his work, not have a source of inspiration derived from reality. It is purely about what is to be seen on the sheets of paper, the plan for the composition arrises from the works itself. It is above all the process of painting that he was interested in.
While contemporary Nicolas de Staël was of the opinion that there is always a subject, Van Veldes greatest worry was that, according to his friend Samuel Becket, "there was nothing to paint and nothing to paint with. Devoid of and freed from any reason, Van Velde paints because he feels obliged to".
Throughout his life Van Velde remained sceptical about his position in the world and about the significance of his own work, and it was out of this insecurity that such powerful works as the present lot were born. "The world is a mystery that my paintings help me to penetrate. What I feel is too strange, too violent for me to capture in a word or thought. It demands to appear and I paint." ( Bram van Velde, quoted in Exh. cat. Knoedler Gallery, New York 1968). A fundamental link can be drawn between the existentialism that became the 'lifestyle philosophy' of Post-War Paris and the work of Van Velde. Van Velde's intimate friend and supporter, the playright, Samuel Beckett recognised the insufficiency of words for understanding and elucidating the visual arts, and spoke of the 'curious effect' that van Velde's work had in inducing silence upon its spectators. Beckett wrote of a sense of the incomplete in his works, not distinctly of an unfinished quality but of an unfinishable situation.
Composition from 1963-1964 does, typically for his work, not have a source of inspiration derived from reality. It is purely about what is to be seen on the sheets of paper, the plan for the composition arrises from the works itself. It is above all the process of painting that he was interested in.
While contemporary Nicolas de Staël was of the opinion that there is always a subject, Van Veldes greatest worry was that, according to his friend Samuel Becket, "there was nothing to paint and nothing to paint with. Devoid of and freed from any reason, Van Velde paints because he feels obliged to".