Karel Appel

Karel Appel (1921-2006) was one of the most important European artists of the twentieth century, widely regarded as the leading Dutch painter of his generation. Born on April 25, 1921 in Amsterdam, he grew up in his parents' home on Dapperstraat, where his father ran a barber shop and his mother, a descendant of wealthy French Huguenots, oversaw the household. Appel produced his first painting at fourteen, a still life of a fruit basket, and on his fifteenth birthday his wealthy uncle Karel Chevalier presented him with an easel, paint set, and painting lessons. From 1940 to 1943, during the Second World War, he studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, and in 1946 he held his first exhibition in Groningen.

Appel's early work was influenced by Picasso, Matisse, and Dubuffet, and he first aligned himself with the Nederlandse Experimentele Groep before helping to establish the CoBrA group in 1948 with Corneille, Constant, Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky, and Jan Nieuwenhuys. Formed in reaction to the New York School's action painters, CoBrA sought to elevate instinct in the creation of art and to oppose all intellectual approaches. Appel also began making assemblages from junk which he called poubelles. In 1949, his fresco Vragende Kinderen at Amsterdam City Hall caused an uproar and was whitewashed over for the next twenty years, prompting Appel to decamp to France, where he lived in a ruined castle in Auxerre.

After 1950, Appel increasingly turned to sculpture, producing large-scale wooden reliefs including his celebrated Appel Circus (1976-1978), and later working in colored polyester and aluminum. In the early 1980s he collaborated with the poet Allen Ginsberg on a series of visual poems, the two bonding over a shared love of jazz. In the early 1990s he began painting opera sets and Tuscan landscapes. He received the UNESCO Prize at the 27th Venice Biennale in 1954 and First Prize at the Guggenheim International Exhibition in New York in 1960. Appel died on May 3, 2006 in Zurich and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He is remembered as the most important Dutch artist of the twentieth century.