Karel Appel: Retrospective 1945-2005

by Karel Appel (Artist)

No discussion of postwar Dutch art--or postwar European art--is complete without mentioning Karel Appel, whom many consider Holland's most important painter. Appel attended the Academy of Arts in Amsterdam from 1940 to 1943, and then bided his time painting landscapes and portraits in an era when artists were forbidden to buy materials or exhibit unless they joined the German "Chamber of Culture." After the liberation, as reproductions of works by Picasso and others began to find their way to Holland, Appel rebelled against his studio training, founded several avant garde groups (including Cobra), and then moved to Paris. Years of travel and experimentation with subjects, colors and materials, left him with a close relationship to the American art community and studios all over the world. Appel is a sculptor and a ceramist, too, but he is above all an expressionist, a man of passion led by spontaneity, who has conversely made a lasting mark.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2006

About the author

Christiaan Karel Appel (Dutch: [krɪsˈtiaːn ˈkɑrəl ɑpɔl] ( listen)) (25 April 1921 – 3 May 2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement Cobra in 1948.