Karel Appel

Karel Appel

Karel Appel - Galerie Max Hetzler Selected Works Videos

A founding figure of CoBrA (1948-1951), which developed from the Dutch Experimental Group (1948), Karel Appel (1921-2006) began his career in the aftermath of the Second World War. Over the course of six decades, the artist experimented widely, across painting, sculpture, drawing, and stage design, distinguishing himself for his astonishing capacity to innovate; Appel never settled in a signature style, media or subject. Going beyond his classical, academic training at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, the artist looked at folk art, as well as the uninhibited work of children and the mentally ill, whilst also drawing from jazz’s spirit of improvisation. Alternating between abstraction and figuration, Appel adopted a material-oriented approach in his practice, and promoted a genuine form of expression, an art which writer and curator Klaus Ottmann describes as “divorced from any political or didactic purpose”.

“The Appel effect represents painting and sculpture at their best. It is close to the heart, animalistic, idealistic and thoroughly experimental. It playfully combines ideology with matter and form, and pushes us beyond the boundaries imposed by the human condition.”

K. Ottmann, ’The Appel Effect’, in: Karel Appel. Retrospective, exh. cat., Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague; Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2016, p. 46

Image: Nude no. 32, 1995, © Karel Appel Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019

Selected Works

Child IV, 1951

L’homme hibou no 1, 1960

Burning Child with Hoop, 1961
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Solo Exhibitions

KAREL APPEL - Galerie Max Hetzler

KAREL APPEL

Window Gallery, Goethestraße 2/3, Berlin

21 January – 9 March 2020
Karel Appel - Galerie Max Hetzler

Late Nudes, 1985 – 1995

Goethestraße 2/3, Berlin

15 November 2019 – 11 January 2020

Group Exhibitions

Karel Appel, André Butzer, William N. Copley, Ida Ekblad, Jeff Elrod, Walton Ford, Tursic & Mille - Galerie Max Hetzler

Karel Appel, André Butzer, William N. Copley, Ida Ekblad, Jeff Elrod, Walton Ford, Tursic & Mille

41 Dover Street, London

1 – 19 September 2020

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

KAREL APPEL

A Retrospective

Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague

16 January – 16 May 2016

Biography

Show Vita
Show Selected Bibliography

Selected Press

Les Inrockuptibles July 2017

The New York Times February 2016

News

Karel Appel et al.

Disonata. Art in Sound up to 1980 (group show)
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
23 September 2020 – 1 March 2021

Curated by Maike Aden, on an original project by Guy Schraenen, this exhibition analyses the development of sound as a creative field of visual arts differentiated from music, from the beginning to the end of the 20th century. The exhibition reflects the efforts of artists who resorted to sound ...
Karel Appel

Karel Appel, Navid Nuur et al.

CoBrA. The colour of freedom (group show)
Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam
1 June – 4 October 2020

How is it supposed to be? The artists of the CoBrA group did not consider this important at all. They completely disregarded the academy’s rules.

Directly after World War II, they were in need off a free way of painting. And that included colour. They often painted animals and fantasy ...