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Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming Bram van Velde catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Rainer Michael Mason and Catherine Putman.
"My work is independent of my will, my best works come about driven by an inner force that has nothing to do with the will. It is the immediate spontaneity of what has been lived that is the difference between my work and most others, who make artworks with their intellect" (C. Juliet, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde, Leiden, 1995, p. 13).
A self-confessed painter of his "inner life," Bram van Velde maintained that the artist must "obliterate the world" with what he makes. In this sense, van Velde's carefully crafted paintings can be seen as recepticles of the artist's life. Indeed, for van Velde, who only achieved recognition in the 1960s and who had for the majority of his life suffered varying degrees of poverty, the "invisible life depicted on the canvas" was for him, "more real than what people regard as real life" (Op. cit., p. 5).
In the present work van Velde has created a work that in many ways appears to have constructed itself. Pulling forms and shapes together by moulding and twisting their outlines into rhythms that interconnect and add up to a harmonious but somewhat unstable whole, the artist has worked the surface with an astonishing combination of subtlety and force. His brushmarks are positioned with great precision and surety in places while in others their application is more nonchalant and the paint has been encouraged tor drip and bleed over the surface like a wound.
Incorporating a wide array of delicately contrasting colours, the complex structure of the work betrays an intense struggle on the artist's part in the attempt to balance the picture's disparate elements while maintaining the integral nature of the composition as a whole. A powerful painting that clearly reflects the artist's strength of purpose, Untitled is an eloquent example of the kind of work van Velde had in mind when he described his art as "an effort to get at the source, an inquiry into the mystery of life undertaken with one's entire being" (Ibid, p. 8).
"My work is independent of my will, my best works come about driven by an inner force that has nothing to do with the will. It is the immediate spontaneity of what has been lived that is the difference between my work and most others, who make artworks with their intellect" (C. Juliet, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde, Leiden, 1995, p. 13).
A self-confessed painter of his "inner life," Bram van Velde maintained that the artist must "obliterate the world" with what he makes. In this sense, van Velde's carefully crafted paintings can be seen as recepticles of the artist's life. Indeed, for van Velde, who only achieved recognition in the 1960s and who had for the majority of his life suffered varying degrees of poverty, the "invisible life depicted on the canvas" was for him, "more real than what people regard as real life" (Op. cit., p. 5).
In the present work van Velde has created a work that in many ways appears to have constructed itself. Pulling forms and shapes together by moulding and twisting their outlines into rhythms that interconnect and add up to a harmonious but somewhat unstable whole, the artist has worked the surface with an astonishing combination of subtlety and force. His brushmarks are positioned with great precision and surety in places while in others their application is more nonchalant and the paint has been encouraged tor drip and bleed over the surface like a wound.
Incorporating a wide array of delicately contrasting colours, the complex structure of the work betrays an intense struggle on the artist's part in the attempt to balance the picture's disparate elements while maintaining the integral nature of the composition as a whole. A powerful painting that clearly reflects the artist's strength of purpose, Untitled is an eloquent example of the kind of work van Velde had in mind when he described his art as "an effort to get at the source, an inquiry into the mystery of life undertaken with one's entire being" (Ibid, p. 8).