Gravures Originales Contemporaines

Born into an extremely impoverished family in the Netherlands in 1895, Bram Van Velde was a Dutch painter whose distinctive work was championed in his time by the famous writer Samuel Beckett. After his father abandoned the family upon bankruptcy, Van Velde was left as the sole bread-winner but was encouraged to paint by his employer Eduard Kramer in an interior decorators.

With the Kramers as patrons, Van Velde moved to Paris, where he was greatly impressed by Matisse. His own abstract-expressionistic style was well received by critics, though many of his exhibitions were financial disasters. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that his work was widely lauded and by the late 1970s he was heralded as a significant artist in his own right. He died in 1981.