Karel Appel Dutch, 1921-2006
"Appel paints like a barbarian in his own time — with the fury of a child and the intelligence of a master, he tears open the surface of painting to reveal what lies beneath."
Karel Appel (1921–2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and graphic artist, and one of the founding members of the CoBrA movement. His explosive, brightly coloured works, populated by child-like figures and mythological creatures, challenged post-war European abstraction with savage directness. Trained at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, he moved to Paris in 1950, where he gained international recognition. His work is held at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Modern, and major collections worldwide.
"I paint like a barbarian in a barbaric age."
Karel Appel was born on 25 April 1921 in Amsterdam. He studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam from 1940 to 1943. In 1948, he was a co-founder of CoBrA with Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky, Constant, and others — a group dedicated to expressive spontaneity, primitive imagery, and the energy of children's drawing.
His early CoBrA works were among the most violent and exuberant in the group's output: thick, gestural paint, crude figures, and colours of hallucinatory intensity. After moving to Paris in 1950 and New York in the 1950s, he became one of the most internationally celebrated European painters of his generation, exhibiting widely and winning major prizes including the UNESCO Prize at the Venice Biennale (1953) and the International Prize for Painting (1960).
Throughout his career, Appel was relentlessly inventive, working across painting, sculpture, ceramics, murals, and print. His work engaged with jazz, poetry, and the visual culture of childhood, always maintaining its raw, uninhibited energy. He died on 3 May 2006 in Zurich. The Karel Appel Foundation in Amsterdam holds his archive.
Major exhibitions: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (permanent collection); Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Venice Biennale (UNESCO Prize, 1953); Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Works in public collections: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Selected bibliography: Simon Vinkenoog, Karel Appel, Painter, Abrams, 1962; Jan Vrijman, The Reality of Karel Appel (documentary film), 1962; Karel Appel, Karel Appel: Works on Paper, Prestel, 2000.