Dutch painter, Geer Van Velde is one of the major artists of the École de Paris. Initially close to Fauvism and Expressionism, the artist turned to abstraction, an artistic movement to which he gave a new vision, exploring the interaction between light, space and composition.

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Younger brother of the artist Bram Van Velde, both learned the profession of decorative painter at the beginning before turning in the 1920s to their true vocation: the profession of painter. Upon arriving in Paris, where he settled in 1925, the artist discovered the Salon des Independants, where he exhibited three times. In 1937, he met Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer, who introduced him to influential figures of the time, including Peggy Guggenheim. The latter exhibited it in her London gallery in 1938. In the 1940s, Van Velde moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer and became friends with Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse, then he settled permanently in Cachan in 1944. He exhibited in 1946 at the Maeght Gallery.

His works are preserved in several French and international museums such as the Pompidou Center, the Museum of Fine Arts in Liège or the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. A retrospective was dedicated to him in 1982 at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, then in 2000 at the Picasso Museum in Antibes and in 2010 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon.