Bram van Velde quotes

Paris with its multitude of art directions calls continuously to the deepest penetration and recognition of your inner essence. Only in this way it is possible to create work that refers the time span. (Bram van Velde)
Life and mind are continuously in conflict with each other. I want happiness, security. I won't reach that by considerations of my mind; on the contrary they will lead to a certain despair of the inner person. Not what he thinks engages the artist, but what he feels. View quote
Bram van Velde
It was truly revealing. The strength of the intervention, the intensity of colors and the happiness of this work, has never left me. View quote
Bram van Velde
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. View quote
Bram van Velde
What makes a painting fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is such a rare thing. Most people don't dare to be sincere. View quote
Bram van Velde
Each of my paintings is a cycle. It's like existence, life. They are always in motion.. .If they were fixed and static, they would be false. View quote
Bram van Velde
I can't say or explain anything. Pictures don't come from your head but from life.. .I am always looking for life. All that escapes thought or will-power. View quote
Bram van Velde
Mondrian.. .The constructivists?.. .They had certainties. They wanted a stable basis to work on, but I'm afraid that that was enormous arrogance on their part. Nothing is stable and no certainties are possible. View quote
Bram van Velde
I think there is a degree of primitivism in what I do.. .You have to see without illusions. Without trying to protect yourself. View quote
Bram van Velde
Most people's lives are governed by willpower. An artist is someone who has no will. View quote
Bram van Velde
Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma. (Bram van Velde)
It is true that other people can help you, and to lasting effect.. .If I hadn't had Beckett in 1940 [in Paris, when Van Velde was strongly demoralized by the death of his wife], I'm not sure I could have stood it. I am really not sure.. .At that time he [Beckett] he was driven by an extremely aggressive and fiery Irish spirit. That has lessened as time has gone on.. .I don't know anywhere in modern art any more faithful or more impressive picture of contemporary humanity than the one he offers us in 'The Unamable'. View quote
Bram van Velde
Painting doesn't interest me.. .What I paint is beyond painting. View quote
Bram van Velde
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. View quote
Bram van Velde
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. View quote
Bram van Velde
At is taking risks.. ..a sincere attempt to achieve the impossible, the unknown. View quote
Bram van Velde
Because it's an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it's never enough. View quote
Bram van Velde
Something is trying to come into the world. But I don't know what it is. I never start by knowing. It's impossible to know. Truth is not knowledge. View quote
Bram van Velde
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. View quote
Bram van Velde
You are in an area where knowledge fails. Where you have to advance in ignorance, not even knowing where you are going. View quote
Bram van Velde
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)
I am in a thousand pieces. Painting somehow makes me whole. View quote
Bram van Velde
I am well aware that a painting must inevitably be a bizarre, incomprehensible thing. View quote
Bram van Velde
In the first piece that you Beckett wrote about me [circa 1946], you never once used the word color. That was important. I was struck by it. View quote
Bram van Velde
Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.... this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life. View quote
Bram van Velde