Galerie Paul Prouté

Abandoned by his father at a very young age, Geer van Velde grew up in poverty with his mother and siblings, and after moving many times, they settled in The Hague in 1903. At the age of twelve, he and his brother Bram became apprentices as decorators at the firm Schaijk & Kramers, where their employer, Eduard Kramers, encouraged him to pursue his interest in painting. After completing his military service with the Red Cross, he set out on a walking tour of Flanders, painting signs to earn a living. In 1925, he joined his brother Bram in Paris, decided to devote himself to painting, and settled permanently in France. By October 1926, he had his own studio in Malakoff, and financial support from Kramers helped him make ends meet, as it did for his brother. Between 1928 and 1932, the two brothers exhibited with the Artistes Indépendants. His discovery of Cubism during those years in Paris had a profound impact on him and led him to revise his early works, which had leaned toward Fauvism. In 1933, he met Elisabeth Jokl, and the couple settled on Rue de la Glacière in Paris. His encounter with the Irish writer Samuel Beckett opened the doors to several galleries for him, including Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery in London, where he exhibited forty-five of his paintings in 1938. He decided to retreat for a few years to Cagnes-sur-Mer, which he left in 1944 to settle in Cachan in his studio, where he would remain until the end of his life. In the late 1940s, he discovered the works of his compatriot Piet Mondrian and recognized in them a shared interest in structuring space, but he did not take the leap into total abstraction. He continued to exhibit in galleries and at biennials around the world (New York, São Paulo, Switzerland, Germany, etc.) until his death in Cachan on March 5, 1977.