APPEL, KAREL

The Dutch artist Karel Appel was one of the most important artists of the post-war period and for a long time had the reputation of being its enfant terrible.

Karel Appel was born in Amsterdam in 1921, the second of four children. His father had a barber shop, where Appel trained in the 1930s. His uncle, the painter Karel Chevalier, taught him to draw and introduced him to his own teacher, Jozef Verheijen. He was accepted into the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 1942 on his second attempt. He became acquainted with the works of the Cubists. In 1946 Appel had his first exhibition in Groningen and shortly afterwards took part in the group exhibition "Jonge Schilders" in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. On his numerous trips through Europe, it was inevitable that he should encounter the works of Matisse, Dubuffet, and Picasso. The more the young artist engaged with their work, the more important they became to his own artistic development. In 1948, Karel Appel, Corneille and Constant founded the artist group CoBrA, which produced highly expressive figurative works. The 1949 mural "Vragende kinderen" in the canteen of the Amsterdam City Hall led to a public scandal after viewers were appalled by the "children's paintings"; the work was not shown in public again until some decades later. In 1951, the CoBrA group split up.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the art critic Michel Tapié became aware of the work of the Dutchman, who by then lived in Paris, and became an important supporter. Karel Appel had his international breakthrough in 1954 when he represented the Netherlands at the 27th Venice Biennale and was awarded the UNESCO Prize. In 1957, Appel travelled to New York for the first time, where he met, among others, the gallery owner Martha Jackson, who was to represent him for the rest of her life. In 1959 he won the Grand Prize for Painting at the Sao Paulo Biennale. He was one of the participants in documenta II and III. In 1968 he was inducted into the Order of Orange-Nassau. Again and again, even into old age, Karel Appel sought collaboration with other artists and, for example, provided the designs for various opera performances. Countless travels in the early 1990s led Appel to keep studios in New York, Monaco, and Tuscany, among other places. By then he lived most of the time in New York. In 1999, the Karel Appel Stichling was founded, to which the artist transferred all rights to past and future works. In 2003 he was inducted into the French Legion of Honour. Increasing health problems led to Karel Appel spending more and more time in Zurich, where he died in 2006.

Works by this artist from our auctions

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Lot 3409* - Z35 PostWar & Contemporary - Saturday 07 December 2013, 04.00 PM

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APPEL, KAREL

Works by this artist from our auctions

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