Bram van Velde: Trending quotes

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Bram van Velde: 194 quotes1 like

“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)

“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)

“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)