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Bram van Velde: 194 quotes1 like

“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)

“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)

“I am in the void. Nothing to hang on to.”

Bram van Velde

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

“The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 3 April 1972; p. 86
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“When you are working, you are so far away and so absorbed, it's inevitable that you fall into a vacuum when you stop.... every time when I finish a painting, I always have to wait to get my strength back before I can begin another.”

Bram van Velde

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

“There’s always doubt. There’s nothing you can get hold of.”

Bram van Velde

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

“To be nothing. Just nothing. It’s a frightening experience. You have to let go of everything.”

Bram van Velde

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

“At is taking risks.... a sincere attempt to achieve the impossible, the unknown.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 14 September 1967; p. 68
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Everyone cheats. Only artists don’t. They don’t fool people and they aren’t fooled. They are outside all that. Nobody can understand them.”

Bram van Velde

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

“When you get to the bottom, you discover that there is no room for pride. That’s what I paint.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 28 December 1967; p. 69
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“It is important to see that my paintings are ultimately stimulating. They are not at all the kind of thing that inspires despair.”

Bram van Velde

short quotes, 2 November 1971 pp. 84-85
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“I have to try to see where seeing is no longer possible, where visibility is gone.”

Bram van Velde

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

“The artist is the bearer of life.”

Bram van Velde

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

“I'm now in a big working period, which takes me up so much that hardly anything of me remains. I have never been strong in theories and this becomes worse and worse. My work should give me satisfaction, and that is about life and death... Several paintings full of life and beauty arose again and give me the courage and joy to proceed on the road. There are also several paintings in which I am involved for less than half, discharges in a short time, which have existence for a while, but will not reach shaping.”

Bram van Velde

Letter to H. E. Kramer, 28-07-1929, 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)
1920's