Bram van Velde: Living

Bram van Velde

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

Life

“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)

People

“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

Art , Way

“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

Love , Life , Men , People

“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)

Truth , World , Family , Way

“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)

World , Law

“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)

World

“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)

World , Painting

“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)

People , Beauty

“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

Life , Way , Painting

“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)

Life , Effort , Time

“Painting lives only through the slide towards the unknown in oneself.”

Bram van Velde

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

Painting

“Artists don’t live in the everyday world. That’s why people think they’re an odd bunch.”

Bram van Velde

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

People , World , Thinking

“The artist is living a secret that he has to make manifest”

Bram van Velde

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

Secret

“Art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what’s in life… Art wants to give back everything what’s in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator.”

Bram van Velde

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

Life , Art , Personality