Karel Appel: Retrospective

by Karel Appel (Artist)

Published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition and including 67 paintings, 12 sculptures and more than 60 drawings, Karel Retrospective demonstrates that Dutch artist Karel Appel (1921–2006) was much more than just a member of the avant-garde Cobra group, and more than the flamboyant personal image he cultivated. “I’m tackling two clichés,” Franz Kaiser, the exhibition’s curator, told The New York Times . “One is that Appel was always identified with Cobra and the other one is that Karel was ‘just messing around.’” Appel had a long and varied career before and after Cobra; the artist worked steadily until his death in 2006. Taking stock of Appel’s entire oeuvre, this volume explores the artist’s early interest in outsider art, his wide-ranging stylistic experiments and his highly individual interpretations of traditional genres such as the nude, the portrait and the landscape.

264 pages, Hardcover

Published June 14, 2016

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.