Geer VAN VELDE

Geer van Velde (1898-1977) – Biography, Gouaches and Original Prints

Geer van Velde (Gerardus van Velde) was born at Lisse in the Netherlands on 5 April 1898 and died at Cachan, just south of Paris, on 5 March 1977. The younger brother of the painter Bram van Velde, he settled in France in 1925 and spent his life there, yet his first significant one-man show took place in London, at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery Guggenheim Jeune, in 1938. His closest early champion was the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Shown by Aimé Maeght from 1946, he belongs to the quieter, more architectural wing of the post-war School of Paris: a painter of studios, palettes, light and sea, whose pictures gradually resolved into transparent, constructed abstraction.

Le Coin des Arts currently offers an original gouache by Geer van Velde, Composition – a unique work on paper – together with the poster for the Galerie Louis Carré exhibition of 1982, a posthumous exhibition document rather than an original print. Should a lithograph become available, you can simply “follow the artist” on this page to be notified.

A decorator’s apprenticeship in The Hague (1898-1924)

The van Velde children grew up in poverty after their father’s fuel-wood and charcoal business on the Rhine failed and he left the family. Besides Geer and Bram, the siblings included the future novelist Jacoba van Velde. In 1910, aged twelve, Geer followed Bram into the house-painting and decorating firm of Schaijk & Kramers in The Hague, whose owner, Eduard Kramers, encouraged both boys and partly supported them. Largely self-taught, Geer earned a living painting shop signs, and in 1924 he walked through Flanders, painting from the motif as he went.

Paris, the Indépendants and Samuel Beckett (1925-1937)

In August 1925 Geer joined Bram in Paris; a visit to the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs persuaded him to devote himself entirely to painting. His early canvases – village scenes, fairgrounds, merry-go-rounds – have a deliberately naïve flavour. The brothers exhibited together at Bremen, Berlin and Amsterdam in 1927, then at the Salon des Indépendants from 1928 to 1932. Short of money, Geer cancelled a planned exhibition in 1931 and spent long periods in the Netherlands; the brothers’ first joint exhibition took place in The Hague in September 1933. He married Elisabeth Jokl, and in the mid-1930s he met Samuel Beckett, whom he introduced to Bram – the beginning of Beckett’s long engagement with both painters.

London, 1938: Guggenheim Jeune

In the spring of 1938 Peggy Guggenheim, then running her short-lived London gallery Guggenheim Jeune, showed forty-five of Geer’s paintings. Beckett was then part of her London circle. The exhibition was a commercial failure, and Geer left for the south of France that same year. Britain saw his work again later: according to the chronology published by Galerie Applicat-Prazan, he was included in L’École de Paris 1900-1950 at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1951 and in a School of Paris exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1962. The University of Reading art collection holds a work by him.

Cagnes-sur-Mer, Cachan and Maeght (1938-1959)

Later in 1938 Geer and Elisabeth moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer, where they remained until 1944. Mediterranean light dissolved the motifs of his Ateliers and Intérieurs – palettes, brushes, work tables, windows open onto the sea. A one-man show followed at the Galerie Muratore in Nice in 1942. After the Liberation he settled at Cachan, in a house built for the Dutch painter Tjerk Bottema, and remained there for the rest of his life. In March 1946 Aimé Maeght gave him his first Paris exhibition, with a preface by Jacques Kober, and a contract. Beckett’s essay on the brothers, “La peinture des van Velde ou le monde et le pantalon”, appeared in Cahiers d’art (1945-46); for their joint show at Maeght in June 1948 he wrote “Peintres de l’empêchement”, published in Derrière le miroir. That year their work was also seen in New York at the Kootz Gallery. The Mondrian retrospective in Amsterdam in 1946 pushed Geer towards a stricter geometry. He exhibited at the Salon de Mai every year from 1949, but his last Maeght show, in November 1952, did not sell, and the brothers went their separate ways. In 1959 he took part in documenta II in Kassel.

Late work and posthumous recognition

In 1963 Geer van Velde showed at the São Paulo Bienal and at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro; the Musée Galliera in Paris mounted an exhibition in 1966, followed by the museum of Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1967. He painted his last composition in 1973. The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris held his retrospective in 1982, the year Galerie Louis Carré & Cie showed his paintings; Louis Carré returned to his works on paper in 1989, the year of Germain Viatte’s monograph (Cahiers d’Art). Exhibitions at the Musée Picasso, Antibes and the Musée Unterlinden, Colmar (2000) and Bram et Geer van Velde. Deux peintres, un nom at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (17 April – 19 July 2010) consolidated his reputation. His work is held by the Musée National d’Art Moderne (Centre Pompidou), the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Lyon, Dijon, the Lakenhal in Leiden and the Kunstmuseum in The Hague.

Geer van Velde’s lithographs

Unlike Bram, whose lithographic output runs to several hundred sheets, Geer made very few prints. His original lithographs are essentially tied to Maeght’s periodical Derrière le miroir: the very first issue, devoted to the exhibition Le noir est une couleur (1946-47), contains six lithographs by Geer van Velde, and no. 51 (November 1952), with a text by Frank Elgar, includes two colour lithographs. Printed for the review, such sheets are as a rule neither signed nor numbered, yet they are genuine original lithographs, conceived by the artist for the press. No catalogue raisonné of his prints has, to our knowledge, been published, so references are given by issue of Derrière le miroir and by exhibition catalogue (Maeght, Louis Carré). For background, see what is an original print.

Collecting Geer van Velde: a buyer’s guide

Works on paper first. Gouaches, watercolours and pencil drawings appear on the market more often than prints. Each is unique: check the signature, the provenance (Maeght, Louis Carré, the artist’s family) and the condition of the sheet. The Centre Pompidou’s pencil-and-gouache Composition of about 1955-60, an anonymous gift of 1983, is a good point of comparison.

Derrière le miroir sheets. Recognisable by their format and often by a central fold or the review’s text on the reverse. A pencil signature or edition number on such a sheet should be treated with caution.

Edition. Review printings were large and unnumbered; an impression on larger paper outside the review would be exceptional and should be documented. See the printing.

Posters. Exhibition posters, such as the Galerie Louis Carré poster of 1982, are posthumous and generally offset-printed: collectable documents, not original prints.

Reproductions. Anything described as “after” Geer van Velde is a reproduction. Our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page; for older papers, choose conservation framing with UV-filtering glazing.

The gallery selects Geer van Velde alongside the painters of his generation: Bram van Velde, Jean Bazaine, Roger Bissière, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Gustave Singier. Explore the School of Paris and Lyrical Abstraction and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Germain Viatte, Geer van Velde, Cahiers d’Art, 1989 · Erik Slagter, Geer van Velde en het licht, Waanders, Zwolle, 1998 · Geer Van Velde, Musée Picasso, Antibes / Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, RMN, 2000 · Bram et Geer van Velde. Deux peintres, un nom, Hazan, 2010 · Samuel Beckett, Le Monde et le pantalon, Minuit, 1989 · Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon – press kit, 2010 · Centre Pompidou – Composition · University of Reading Art Collection · Galerie Applicat-Prazan – chronology · Wikipedia – Geer van Velde