Karel APPEL (1921-2006) Lot n° 190

Karel APPEL (1921-2006) Untitled, 1975 Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas Signed and dated lower left "appel 75 55 x 76 cm Provenance: Private collection, Belgium (acquired directly from the artist) Karel Appel is today considered the most important Dutch representative of post-war art history. He co-founded the CoBrA group in 1948, alongside Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky, in response to traditional aesthetic conventions. The group advocated a return to authentic, liberated art, using raw forms and colors. Critics in the Netherlands were very harsh, ridiculing CoBrA and Karel Appel. This negative reception prompted the artist to leave Amsterdam for Paris in the 1950s. Drawings of children and patients at the Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital were his first source of inspiration. Like them, his painting is powerful, expressive and spontaneous. In the 1970s, Appel's work was neither figurative nor totally abstract; the glass wall between figuration and abstraction was broken in order to bring them together, and it was in this sense that his art was developed after he had wiped the slate clean. Our painting, with its broad paste and almost anthropomorphic forms, dates from 1975, when Karel Appel was 54 years old. His painting was mature, the CoBrA years had infused it and his style had asserted itself; everything in this painting crystallizes them. Indeed, the seeds of CoBrA sown between 1948 and 1951 had germinated, grown and fully developed during this period. Karel Appel's decade of the 70s is undoubtedly the one that made the greatest impression on the eye.