Dutch artist Karel Appel was one of the driving forces behind the CoBrA movement (1948-51), a loose knit group of artists from Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn and Christian Dotremont were all members. CoBrA was a reaction against the cool, geometric abstraction in Europe and, partially inspired by Abstract Expressionism in America, brought abstraction and figuration together. The CoBrA artists worked freely and spontaneously, each in their own unique way. They sought the authentic source of creation and found inspiration in drawings and paintings by children and the mentally ill, among other things. With their intuitive and often wild, gestural styles and influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx, CoBrA artists endeavoured to arrive at art that was accessible to everyone and could be made by people from all walks of life, based on the intrinsic human urge for expression.
At the height of the war, Appel was studying traditional painting in Amsterdam. Shortly after the conflict, he became heavily influenced by Picasso, Matisse and Dubuffet; the first of whom he appreciated for his pseudo-figurative painting style; the second for his bright colour palette; and the last for his raw and heavy use of impasto. In around 1947-48 Appel prised himself away from these pre-war expressionist art forms. He began painting more angular, colourful shapes and transformed human and animal figurations into primitive beings and monstrous freaks. Danish avant-garde and primitive folk art were other powerful influences during the CoBrA period. They both contributed to his evolution towards a wild, impulsive and emotionally charged formal language. Appel made his definitive international breakthrough in 1954, with exhibitions in Paris and New York, amongst other cities. It was not until 1968 that he staged his first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam.
Appel’s output was prolific, and at the end of the 50s he had fully developed his personal, typically wild, gestural painting style and use of thickly applied paint. Yet he continued to experiment with the relationships between figuration and abstraction. Appel’s impulsive, childlike and irrational painting was of crucial importance for several generations of artists, such as the Neue Wilden and the neo-expressionists in the 70s and 80s. He remains one of the most important figures in modern and contemporary painting to this day.
