‘Although I was already aware that George and I had a mutual respect for each other’s work, I didn’t know him in person until 1957. I met him at an opening of one of his exhibitions, where I was shocked to see him posing in front of one of his drawings. Afterwards, I told him that I felt the whole scene to be a fundamentally inartistic charade. George answered that he had always been present in his work, and that for him there were no strict boundaries between the universal and the individual. And then he added that there was immense beauty in vanity, and I believed him. I could read the man in his work.’ (2011)

Rinus Van de Velde