Dear Friends,
Galerie de la Présidence remains open during lockdown.
We are present at he gallery where you can contact us by phone and mail.
Let’s stay in touch!
Today, we are happy to invite you to spent “one minute” with Geer van Velde and two paintings created in 1953 and 1963.
Françoise and Florence Chibret-Plaussu
Geer van Velde as a long meditation on light
Both Geer and his brother Bram were Dutch artists and first trained as painter-decorators but very soon, they became convinced that their true vocation lay in painting.
In 1925, the two brothers settled in Paris and began a life as bohemian and penniless artists.
In 1937, Geer van Velde, whom we are talking about today, became friends with Samuel Beckett who obtained a first exhibition for him at Peggy Guggenheim’s brand new London gallery.
During the summer of 1938 Geer van Velde settled with his wife in Cagnes-sur-Mer with a view of the Mediterranean.
During the 6 years spent in this village, he elaborated the elements of his future work with a formal vocabulary that became increasingly abstract. He organized his composition of space and light according to rules that became clearer step by step.
In 1944 he returned to Paris and settled in Cachan. The workshop theme became the essential subject of his work, a new source of inspiration, a new light. It was the place par excellence of the painter’s intimacy with his creation.
Here is a superb example of this ‘workshops’ period
with this oil painted in 1953,
when he exhibited at the Maeght gallery.
Composition
Circa 1953
Oil on canvas
81 x 100 cm
Signed with the initials “GvV” lower right
Signed on reverse
The abstraction is almost complete, schematized to the extreme.
Verticality, rhythms and refined tones are all present.
In this musical score, he reconstructed the studio with its light and its shadows.
In 1963 Geer van Velde created this second canvas,
which is part of the large square formats series.
Composition
Vers 1963
Oil on canvas
162 x 162 cm
The representation of the workshop is decomposed and recomposed in a cross construction.
The painting itself became its own subject.
Subtle differences in light tones divide the background into luminous rectangles on which shapes and colors, lines and textures are placed.
A slight movement and a sensitive balance animate this ensemble.
As Pierre François Moget, the expert of this artist, says:
‘In this colorful composition, Geer van Velde now only retains from reality the lived experience of light and space’.
These two oils which are a call to meditation can be discovered at the gallery.
Price upon request. Contact us.
