Untitled, Montrouge

Untitled, Montrouge was painted during the years of torment van Velde endured in post-war Paris. Having spent the wartime self-consciously isolated and unable to paint, the subsequent years during the 1950s, were his most productive. Experimenting with line and colour in compositions like the present work, he attempted to convey his confusion about himself and his work, trying to express that 'the world is a mystery that my paintings help me to penetrate. What I feel is too strange, too violent for me to capture in a word or thought. It demands to appear and I paint.' (Bram van Velde, as quoted in Exh. cat., Galerie Knoedler, Bram van Velde, New York 1968).