Bram Van Velde was born October 19, 1895 in Zoeterwoude, not far from Leyde. Abandoned by his bankrupted father, Bram Van Velde grew up in terrible poverty. Self-taught, he was at a very early age attracted to painting, and at twelve years old he began an apprenticeship at Schayk & Kramers’ design studio in La Haye. The Kramer family encouraged him in his art, receptive to his talent as both collectors and art amateurs. They would become his patron until 1934. With the outbreak of WWI, Bram was obliged to become the family breadwinner. He worked as a house painter and decorator while registering at Maurithuis La Haye to copy the ancient masters.

In 1922, the Kramers in the Hague encouraged Van Velde to travel with their financial support. He visited Munich before settling north of Brême, at Worpswede, where he encountered a colony of Expressionist artists. He then distanced himself from his former profession, with its bourgeois ties, so as to open himself to modernity. A liveliness of pigment, a gestuality of line now entered his work. He subsequently left Worpswede in favor of Paris, painting bouquets of flowers in brilliant colors, an as well as views of Chartres and its suburban landscapes. His paintings then pushed toward aestheticism, rendering itself to a two dimensionality that would be distinctive of his mature work.

His career was moving forward, and in February 1927 he headed to Brême to exhibit his works. He was admitted along with his brother Greer to the Salon des Independents in Paris. There he became close to Paul Guillaume and at that time discovered Matisse and the Piano Lesson, an encounter that would be essential for his work. Influenced first by the German Expressionists, in Paris he opened himself to the influence of the Fauves. He worked until he achieved a personal abstraction to which he would hold true. In a series of compositions of fruit beside a window, he abolishes the distance between interior and exterior, between conceived forms and descriptive elements that here enter a system of contours and rings suggesting interwoven surfaces. He distinguishes himself thus from French artists who achieved their abstract style through Impressionism or Cubism.

On October 6, 1928, Van Velde married the German painter Lilly Klöker. In the wake of the Great Depression, living conditions worsened, and the couple decided to move to Spain. Shortly after, however, came the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Lilly died and Van Velde repatriated back to Paris, moving in with his brother Greer. He then met Marthe Arnaud, a former missionary to Zambize, who would become his companion. She owned African sculptures and cloths that would later influence the artist. Through a mutual friend, he later met Samuel Beckett. They became close while both pursuing their own paths, strict and without compromise; they would both gain celebrity after WWII. Just like Beckett, Van Velde felt that art was not a means of expressing one’s interior life. The only thing that mattered was to achieve a result at once perfect and autonomous.

It was in 1939 that the artist created his own plastic language, with three large gouaches that would found the autonomy of his art. Tried by the terrors of war, Van Velde stopped all pictorial activity fro, 1941 to 1945. After the war, he returned to his art in full control of the plastic language that would characterize the ensemble of his work. The interior tensions within the painter materialized a conception of space that was imminently personal. He liked to introduce fluidity into his work that most often displayed a luminous transparency. His first personal exposition debuted March 21, 1946 at the Galerie Mai in Paris, with twenty-five paintings – almost the entirety of his work. It was a failure. In 1947, he signed with Paris’ Galerie Maeght, and in 1948 he exhibits at Kootz in New York – once again a commercial failure, despite a favorable critique from Willem de Kooning. Van Velde’s career as a book illustrator began in 1949 with four lithographs designed for Marthe Arnaud’s Enfants de ventre. In 1951, Van Velde painted four large-format oil paintings in which he breaks away from the object. The painting was at once a surface as well as a divided space. With another absence of buyers at Maeght, he stopped painting for a year, thus leading Maeght to break their contract with him in 1952. Jacques Putman, whom Van Velde met in 1949, would take on the artist from that point on. In 1958, Franz Meyer organized Van Velde’s first museum exposition, his first retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Bern. The couple Bram-Marthe left Paris the same year. The following year brought the death of Marthe, killed in a car accident. While in Geneva on Christmas of 1959, Bram met Madeleine, who would then become his new companion.

It was not until the 1960’s, when he moved to Geneva, that the artist would come to know a certain notoriety. After 1961, the rhythm of his expositions accelerated. A film by Jean-Michel Maurice is made about his life. In October 1964 the young author Charles Juliet visits him for the first time. Van Velde moved between Paris and Geneva, where he began to paint before settling there in 1967. The following Prisunic etchings under the direction of Jacques Putman marked the beginning of a production of lithographs that would reach 400 numbers before his death. In 1973 he painted a number of large gouaches at La Chapelle-sur-Carouge that would be the last “savage” use of color in his work. Aimé Maeght then welcomed him back to Galerie Maeght.

Bram collaborated on the art review TROU, for which he created an original print to illustrate its one hundred copies. Afterwards he painted his last small format works. Bram Van Velde died on December 28, 1981 at Grimaud, near Saint-Tropez. His friend and mentor Jacques Putman, who had supported him after his departure from Maeght and for the rest career, died on February 27, 1994 in Paris, and rests close to the artist.

Bram van Velde, some art links for more information and biography facts about the Dutch painter artist, creating abstract art mainly in France, friend of Samuel Beckett

* detailed biography facts on information on life and art of the famous Dutch abstract painter artists Bram van Velde, on Wikipedia

* a lot of pictures and images of the abstract art by Bram van Velde, on Google Images