.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
There are few artists who spoke so eloquently of their art as did Bram van Velde (1895-1981) — an insight, perhaps, into his intimate, lifelong friendship with writer Samuel Beckett. ‘I only show what’s there. Yes, somewhere, there might also be joy,’ Van Velde once said of his work (J. Putman, Bram van Velde, Paris 1975, p. 16). At another point he would go on to to give a more visual elucidation of the same theme: ‘We are always two. A living and a dead. And they are always at odds’ (J. Putman 1975, p. 21).
To a viewer of the current work, such quotes seems to speak to it directly. Van Velde’s Untitled, painted circa 1959-1960, shows two conjoined figures against an abstract interpretation of a landscape. To the left of the piece, browns, greys and black consume the space, while to the right, bright strokes and soft spots of red, yellow, and light blue are placed at the forefront.
Van Velde’s oeuvre walks a tightrope between figurative and non-figurative art, leading the viewer to the edge of an interpretation without ever permitting him to reach one. He achieved this by using his own unique language of lyrical abstraction, so esteemed by Beckett that he declared it to be like no other in existence: ‘what is this coloured surface that wasn’t there before? I do not know, having never seen anything of its kind. It seems to have no connection to art, if my memories of art are correct’ (S. Beckett in J. Putman, 1975, p. 38).
Untitled was painted just two years after a career-revitalising exhibition at Galerie Michel Warren in Paris. In 1959 Van Velde’s long term partner, Marthe Arnaud, died. Van Velde was a highly sensitive being, and his painting habits were deeply influenced by his surroundings and current events. He stopped painting for the whole of World War Two, picked up his brush again in 1945, and stopped again for one year after the commercial failure of an exhibition at New York’s Kootz Gallery in 1948. By the time he produced Untitled the peak-period of his career had been set into motion, and he continued to paint through the tragedy of his partner’s passing, incorporating it into the lyricism of his canvases.
At around the same time he created the current work, in 1960, he would paint a work of slightly larger dimensions in bright pastel-coloured oil paint. In the words of his mentor and friend who supported him after his departure from Galerie Maeght, Jacques Putman, the oil-on-canvas displays a ‘sovereign equilibrium’ and the ‘tragedy so often inherent to the paintings of Bram van Velde, gives way to peace’ (J. Putman, 1975, p. 23). The brightness of this painting is set almost entirely free from the heavy blacks and browns that outline the forms of many of Van Velde’s post-war works. Untitled stands between the liberated peace evoked through so many of his paintings of the 1960s and ‘70s, and the dissonant sadness of his earlier works. The conjoined figures at the forefront of the painting seem to evoke this dissonance directly: with Van Velde’s own words in mind, perhaps the form on the left resembles ‘the living’, irremediably attached to its essential counterpart, ‘the dead’, depicted here with a faintly discernible face and what appears to be a scythe.
Untitled, painted at a high-point of the artist’s career, anticipates Van Velde’s exploration of a deeper abstraction in the 1960s while simultaneously looking back to his earliest representational works. Paysage de Neige, painted in 1923, depicts two black-cloaked men walking a snow-covered route to a solitary village in the distance, their worn faces turned towards the viewer. It is difficult not to see these two figures in the abstracted forms of Untitled.
Bram van Velde was a true artist’s artist, whose works, in the words of Asger Jorn, ‘subsist of nothing but his soul’ (A. Jorn, 1967, quoted in J. Putman 1975, inside cover). Van Velde himself saw painting as his liberation from the world: ‘The real world with its common logic pushes us toward catastrophe. The artist seeks in his work to free himself from this weight. … Painting is man in the face of his downfall’ (M. Seuphor, Abstract Painting, New York 1964, p. 134). Untitled is an exemplary summation of the psychological and artistic peaks of this most esteemed and unique painter.
To a viewer of the current work, such quotes seems to speak to it directly. Van Velde’s Untitled, painted circa 1959-1960, shows two conjoined figures against an abstract interpretation of a landscape. To the left of the piece, browns, greys and black consume the space, while to the right, bright strokes and soft spots of red, yellow, and light blue are placed at the forefront.
Van Velde’s oeuvre walks a tightrope between figurative and non-figurative art, leading the viewer to the edge of an interpretation without ever permitting him to reach one. He achieved this by using his own unique language of lyrical abstraction, so esteemed by Beckett that he declared it to be like no other in existence: ‘what is this coloured surface that wasn’t there before? I do not know, having never seen anything of its kind. It seems to have no connection to art, if my memories of art are correct’ (S. Beckett in J. Putman, 1975, p. 38).
Untitled was painted just two years after a career-revitalising exhibition at Galerie Michel Warren in Paris. In 1959 Van Velde’s long term partner, Marthe Arnaud, died. Van Velde was a highly sensitive being, and his painting habits were deeply influenced by his surroundings and current events. He stopped painting for the whole of World War Two, picked up his brush again in 1945, and stopped again for one year after the commercial failure of an exhibition at New York’s Kootz Gallery in 1948. By the time he produced Untitled the peak-period of his career had been set into motion, and he continued to paint through the tragedy of his partner’s passing, incorporating it into the lyricism of his canvases.
At around the same time he created the current work, in 1960, he would paint a work of slightly larger dimensions in bright pastel-coloured oil paint. In the words of his mentor and friend who supported him after his departure from Galerie Maeght, Jacques Putman, the oil-on-canvas displays a ‘sovereign equilibrium’ and the ‘tragedy so often inherent to the paintings of Bram van Velde, gives way to peace’ (J. Putman, 1975, p. 23). The brightness of this painting is set almost entirely free from the heavy blacks and browns that outline the forms of many of Van Velde’s post-war works. Untitled stands between the liberated peace evoked through so many of his paintings of the 1960s and ‘70s, and the dissonant sadness of his earlier works. The conjoined figures at the forefront of the painting seem to evoke this dissonance directly: with Van Velde’s own words in mind, perhaps the form on the left resembles ‘the living’, irremediably attached to its essential counterpart, ‘the dead’, depicted here with a faintly discernible face and what appears to be a scythe.
Untitled, painted at a high-point of the artist’s career, anticipates Van Velde’s exploration of a deeper abstraction in the 1960s while simultaneously looking back to his earliest representational works. Paysage de Neige, painted in 1923, depicts two black-cloaked men walking a snow-covered route to a solitary village in the distance, their worn faces turned towards the viewer. It is difficult not to see these two figures in the abstracted forms of Untitled.
Bram van Velde was a true artist’s artist, whose works, in the words of Asger Jorn, ‘subsist of nothing but his soul’ (A. Jorn, 1967, quoted in J. Putman 1975, inside cover). Van Velde himself saw painting as his liberation from the world: ‘The real world with its common logic pushes us toward catastrophe. The artist seeks in his work to free himself from this weight. … Painting is man in the face of his downfall’ (M. Seuphor, Abstract Painting, New York 1964, p. 134). Untitled is an exemplary summation of the psychological and artistic peaks of this most esteemed and unique painter.