Skip to main content
Filter artworksArtworks
Close

Select a category:

  • Painting
  • Sculpture
  • Photography
  • Works on paper
Filter by keyword
Width range
- inches
Height range
- inches
Filters

Date

Edition

Medium

Nationality

Style

Price range
$
-
$
19th, 20th, 21st Century Art
Taylor Graham
American and European Art
Search submit
Enquiry list
0 items
Send enquiry

Enquiry list

This artwork has been saved in your enquiry list. You can either review your list and make an enquiry, or continue to browse and find other artworks.
View enquiry list
Continue browsing
Menu
  • Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Paintings
  • Sculpture
  • Photography
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Notable sales
  • Transport
  • Corporate art
  • Contact

Paintings

Composition
Composition
Composition, Circa 1956
Geer van Velde
Oil on canvas
25 3/4 x 32 inches
Framed: 33 x 39 1/2 inches
To be included in the forthcoming Geer van Velde catalogue raisonné, being prepared by M. Pierre François Moget
Initialed lower right
Add to enquiry list
Share
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Previous
|
Next
180 
of 465
artist Description provenance exhibitions literature

artist

Geer Van Velde was born on April 5, 1898 in Lisse, a town in the Netherlands. He and his older brother Bram, who was also a painter of note, endured misery and abject poverty, when their father abandoned the family. After being apprenticed to the decorating firm Schaijk and Eduard H. Kramers, Geer moved to Paris to join his brother. Initially Geer was influenced by the Russian born French artist Marc Chagall, who was a pioneer in the art movement of modernism as well as one of the greatest figural painters of the 20th century. Geer van Velde at this juncture painted subjects from nature but then began to experiment with painting works that explored the relationship between abstract geometric shapes. Geer always remained very close to his older brother Bram. An exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in 2010 explored how the two influenced each other in their different and diverging artistic pursuits. Together their art reflected the aesthetic issues that both confronted and revolutionized art in pre and post World War II Europe and formed a part of the École de Paris. Both brothers were intensively influenced by the Cubist movement, a style of painting from which Geer never deviated during his artistic career.

Description

Composition is an exceptional example of Van Velde’s late 1950s compositions.  The cubist planes, fields and arcs are beautifully synchronized and balanced and can be characterized as one of those canvases where “magic” happens.  It also seems to be a rarity for him to use the cross like forms that dominate the center of the canvas but it is part of what creates a visual strength to the work.  In addition, there is a lot of color in the work but it cohesively ties together in such a seamless way that the painting reads initially as a “tones of gray” color palette. By 1960, Van Velde had moved from painting recognizable landscape imagery to abstract-geometric compositions in the tradition of the French Cubist painter and printmaker Jacques Villon (1875-1963). A member of the acclaimed École de Paris Geer Van Velde has applied his distinctly modulated palette of blended grays, charcoals, blues, browns and whites, still reminiscent of his landscapes and figural studies, to define the geometric shapes expertly arranged and balanced across the canvas. The carefully crafted balance of geometric shapes is matched only by the quality of these softly harmonized tones, the unmistakable mark of the assured hand of the former draughtsman who had carefully studied and applied the lessons of Picasso and Braque.  

provenance

Private Collection, Laren.

Anon. sale, Christie's Amsterdam, 22 May 1990, lot 293

Private Collection, Switzerland

Anon. sale, Loudmer Paris, 7 October 1995, lot 35

Private Collection

Private Dutch Collection, since 1995

exhibitions

Schiedam, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Kunst uit huis VI, 2010.

Amersfoort, Museum Flehite and Mondriaanhuis, Cobra tot Zero, 2015-2016 (illustrated in colour, p. 28).

literature

Eigen weg, Schiedam 2010 (illustrated in colour, p. 130)

New York

5 East 82nd Street

New York, NY 10028

 

203.216.3088

646.422.7884

 

Monday - Thursday

9am - 5pm

And by Appointment

Port Chester

168 Irving Avenue

Suite 301B

Port Chester, NY 10573

 

914.937.2070

 

By Appointment

Send an email
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Artsy, opens in a new tab.
Copyright © 2021 Taylor Graham
Site by Artlogic

NEW YORK

5 East 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028 203.216.3088 - 646.422.7884 info@taylorandgraham.com
Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm, And by Appointment

PORT CHESTER

168 Irving Avenue, Suite 301B Port Chester, NY 10573 914.937.2070
By Appointment