Bram van Velde Quotes (97 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Bram van Velde: 97 quotes1 like

Famous Bram van Velde Quotes

“The important thing is to be nothing.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Of course painting is ridiculous. But it’s the only way I've got to get closer to life.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

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

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“Everything has to end before it can begin.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“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.”

Bram van Velde

11 August 1972; p. 90
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“I can't say or explain anything. Pictures don’t come from your head but from life... I am always looking for life. All that escapes thought or will-power.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 2 April 1967; p. 63
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Bram van Velde Quotes about painting

“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.”

Bram van Velde

About his contact with Beckett in Paris, before and during World War 2.
1970's
Source: article "Schilder Bram van Velde in Dordrecht," in: NRC Handelsblad by Paul Groot, 1979 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)

“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.”

Bram van Velde

11 August 1972; pp. 90-91
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“Each painting is linked to a fundamental drama.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Painting doesn't interest me... What I paint is beyond painting.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Creating a painting is a matter of ensuring that all its parts achieve unity. Though it's a precarious, fragile unity.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“I don’t know if I've got close enough [in two recent paintings he made] to what I was really trying to achieve. But at least I've tried, I've made the attempt. I've done what I could. I've gone as far as my powers permitted.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 2 November 1970; p. 81
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

Bram van Velde Quotes about life

“Life is so difficult to catch.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Artists who are the defenders of true life become phonies. That’s the perfidious thing about this world. Society turns anyone with a bit of life inside them into a medical case.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“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.”

Bram van Velde

Letter to B. Kramers, 1926, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 18 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1920's

“Life is wrecked by living.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 14 September 1967; p. 63
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Painting is an aid to vision. It turns life, the complexity of life, into something visible. It reveals things that we don’t know how to see.”

Bram van Velde

2 April 1967; p. 62
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.... this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 31 October 1966; p. 58
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Bram van Velde: Trending quotes

“Van Gogh.. Fascinating. The fragility of that strong spirit.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Picasso.... the master.... being a master: 'I don't search, I find' [a famous quote of Picasso, where he criticize the 'searching' artists].. the master, the mastery.... Producing, producing... He [Picasso! ] only knows how to work, can’t do anything else. What lost souls!... The great risk is producing for its own sake. You must never force things. You just have to wait.”

Bram van Velde

31 October 1966; p. 59
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“The more you know, the less you are.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Bram van Velde Quotes

“Yes, I abandoned everything. Painting required it. It was all or nothing.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“I feel myself tied to life. To the immensity and complexity of life. Each painting is an impulse towards life.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 29 August 1972; pp. 92-93
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“I think there is a degree of primitivism in what I do... You have to see without illusions. Without trying to protect yourself.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“A painter is someone who can't use words. His only escape is to be a seer.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

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

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Most people's lives are governed by willpower. An artist is someone who has no will.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Paris with its multitude of art directions calls continuously to the deepest penetration and recognition of your inner essence. Only in this way it is possible to create work that refers the time span.”

Bram van Velde

in his letter to H. E. Kramer, 25-10-1926, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 44 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1920's

“Perhaps he [ Mondrian ] was too faithful to a single discovery. And perhaps that kind of painting was right for the period. But now peace and harmony are no longer possible. There is only anguish.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“The greatest moment is when you realize that the painting you've just finished is nothing. When you manage to detach yourself from it.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“The world of architecture – and of works conceived for architecture – tends towards beauty. True beauty tends towards ugliness and panic.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, May 1972; p. 87
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“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.”

Bram van Velde

2 April 1967; p. 62
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“What makes a painting fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is such a rare thing. Most people don't dare to be sincere.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“My work is independent of my will. My best works are created when driven by an inner strength. This has nothing to do with my will. It is that immediate spontaneity of my intense way of living that makes the difference between my work and a lot of other artists who make art works with their mind.”

Bram van Velde

Letter to H. E. Kramer, 14-11-1927, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 46 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1920's

“The real world with its common logic pushes us toward catastrophe. The artists seek in his work to free himself from this weight. Art is being transformed into politics, love into trade, education into an apparatus for stifling the mind. In the midst of such horrors, clearly only the dream within me has life. But how do other people live? -There is color, virginal expression - new, without a cage, without routine, without limit, a bath of sun and light. We must realize that nothing man does is of any value. The trouble is that people want to be paid. Only sick men can be artists. Their suffering pushes them into the accomplishment of deeds which reinvest the world with meaning. The sensitive man or the artist can only be a sick man in our civilized life, so full of lies. To think of art as a profession, how appealing!”

Bram van Velde

Painting is man in the face of his downfall.
1960's
Source: Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 134

“When you cross any border there is always an uneasy moment when you feel yourself automatically an enemy. Artists don’t belong to any group or country... When you are living the truth, the world no longer exists, events become unimportant. But the way of truth is not easy.... if you are on the side of truth, you have no power. That’s why you are always defeated. The power, all the power, is on the side of the world... I have been completely absorbed in my adventure. No country, no family, no ties. I didn’t exist anymore. I just had to press on.”

Bram van Velde

2 April 1967; p. 63
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“You are in an area where knowledge fails. Where you have to advance in ignorance, not even knowing where you are going.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“I need to go towards the illogical. This world we live in destroys us. It is always governed by the same laws. You have to create images that don’t belong to it. That are totally different from those it presents us.”

Bram van Velde

11 August 1972; p. 90
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

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

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“It was truly revealing. The strength of the intervention, the intensity of colors and the happiness of this work, has never left me.”

Bram van Velde

Quote about the painting 'Piano lesson' of Matisse, Van Velde saw around 1925 for the first time and inspired him strongly during the 1930's
1970's
Source: article Schilder Bram van Velde in Dordrecht, by Paul Groot, newspaper NRC Handelsblad, 1979 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)

“Each of my paintings is a cycle. It’s like existence, life. They are always in motion... If they were fixed and static, they would be false.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Life and mind are continuously in conflict with each other. I want happiness, security. I won’t reach that by considerations of my mind; on the contrary they will lead to a certain despair of the inner person. Not what he thinks engages the artist, but what he feels.”

Bram van Velde

Letter to H.P. Bremmer, 17-11-1930, City Archive The Hague, as quoted in Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1930's

“I am well aware that a painting must inevitably be a bizarre, incomprehensible thing.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“There's a perpetual duel going on between the world of the spirit and the world of things. Although the one only has meaning in relation to the other.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“In the first piece that you Beckett wrote about me [circa 1946], you never once used the word color. That was important. I was struck by it.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“In this world that destroys me, the only thing that I can do is to live my weakness. That weakness is my only strength.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Each time it’s an attempt to get there. To get to see. To get where you can see.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“About Van Gogh.. a man who is on fire, a torch. His sincerity is absolute. His best painting is the grain field where he kills himself. There we find ourselves at the border of the art of painting. We cannot go further.”

Bram van Velde

1980's
Source: Je peins l'Impossibilité de peindre, by M. Nuridsany, newspaper Le Figaro, 24-10-1989, p. 35, as quoted in Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 40 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)

“I don’t set out to speak a comprehensible language. But my language is authentic.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Painting is being alive. Through my painting, I beat back this world that stops us living and where we are in constant danger of being destroyed... No, you have to know when to keep silent.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 31 December 1966; pp. 60-61
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“You are in constant danger of being destroyed.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“The most difficult thing is when you can’t do anything. When you just have to wait.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 9 November 1965; p. 54
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“It is true that other people can help you, and to lasting effect... If I hadn't had Beckett in 1940 [in Paris, when Van Velde was strongly demoralized by the death of his wife], I'm not sure I could have stood it. I am really not sure... At that time he [Beckett] he was driven by an extremely aggressive and fiery Irish spirit. That has lessened as time has gone on... I don't know anywhere in modern art any more faithful or more impressive picture of contemporary humanity than the one he offers us in 'The Unamable.”

Bram van Velde

2 November 1970; p. 79
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“I am powerless, helpless. Each time it’s a leap in the dark. A deliberate encounter with the unknown.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“I don't like talking. I don’t like people talking to me... Painting is silence.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“A painting is not a battle against other people, but against oneself.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“Oh Baudelaire... He used to be enormously important to me. It's thanks to him that I was able to get through the war [in Paris, during 1940 – 1945 Van Velde had a long and painful break, with only a few paintings he finished]. A true loyal mind without hypocrisy. The most universal spirit. The greatest Frenchman. I have always been much less interested in painters”

Bram van Velde

than Baudelaire - a great surprise to hear for Charles Juliet the interviewer
14 September 1967; p. 66
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Through painting I try to get closer to nothingness, to the void.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“The beauty other people create is not for the artists. Artists have to live alone.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“The most difficult thing is not to want anything.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Van Gogh... In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out.”

Bram van Velde

two quotes, 16 July 1970; p. 77
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“The less you think, the better it is.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“However terrible it is, the thing never involves any sadness”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“When I am painting, driven by lively tensions, I want to express what’s going on in me. When that tension has ceased, when the life in me became visible, then something happened which had to happen. Over and over again you experience a work which is created in this way. What happened? It is hard to say, because it was not my mind that led but the inner desire that revealed its inner life.”

Bram van Velde

Letter to H.P. Bremmer, 17-11-1930, City Archive The Hague, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 50 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1930's

“They make you and you have no say in it. It’s w:Godot all the time. A chain around your neck and the whip cracking behind you.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“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.”

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“If these gouaches [Bram van Velde recently made] live at all, it is because they are true, they derive from life. They are born of the unknown – and not of habit or know-how, or intention, or of some recipe.... there comes a time when serious work is no longer an effort. When demanding work of that kind no longer tires you.”

Bram van Velde

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

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

Bram van Velde

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)