Geer van Velde

Geer van Velde, actually Gerardus van Velde ( born April 5, 1898 in Lisse, Holland, † March 5, 1977 in Cachan, France), was a Dutch painter.

Geer van Velde was a self-taught as an artist. He is regarded as one of the major representatives of Abstract painting after the Second World War, which became known outside the Netherlands. He is the younger brother of the artist Bram van Velde ( 1895-1981 ). The brothers lived a childhood and youth full of hardship and poverty.

Bram and Geer van Velde went to Paris in 1925. Geer worked as a freelance painter and created expressionistic landscape painting, images of figures and still life.

In 1938 a radical change in his painting occurred. During a stay in South of France, in Cagnes -sur -Mer, he developed his own abstract geometric style, which he henceforth maintained. He was influenced by the abstract artists of the Ecole de Paris. His friend Samuel Beckett gave him the possibility of a first solo exhibition in 1938 in the Gallery of Peggy Guggenheim in Cork Street in London.

With some important exhibitions, on the recommendation of Pierre Bonnard, in the prestigious Galerie Maeght in Paris in the years 1946, 1948 and 1952, consolidated his reputation as a painter. He has received international attention. In 1951 he was awarded the First Prize of the Biennale of Menton. In 1959 he took part in documenta 2 in Kassel. The Amsterdam art dealer M. L. de Boer discovered him in 1971 and organized for him his first solo exhibition in his native Holland.

In 1978, his art was exhibited along with works by his friend Roger Bissière and Serge Poliakoff in Amsterdam.