Karel Appel
Karel Appel | |
---|---|
Rijksakademie | |
Known for | Painting, drawing, sculpture, wall-painting |
Movement | CoBrA |
Christiaan Karel Appel (pronounced
Childhood
Christiaan Karel Appel was born on 25 April 1921[1] in his parents' house at Dapperstraat 7 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. As a child he was often called 'Kik'. On the ground floor his father, Jan Appel, had a barbershop. His mother, born Johanna Chevallier, was a descendant of French
At fourteen, Appel produced his first real painting on canvas, a still life of a fruit basket. For his fifteenth birthday, his wealthy uncle Karel Chevalier gave him a paint set and an easel. An avid amateur painter himself, Chevalier gave his namesake some lessons in painting.[1]
Career
From 1940 to 1943, during the German occupation, Appel studied at the
In 1948 Appel joined
As a result of this controversy and other negative Dutch reactions to CoBrA, Appel moved to Paris in 1950 and developed his international reputation by travelling to Mexico, the United States, Yugoslavia, and Brazil. He also lived in New York City and Florence. His first American gallery exhibition took place in 1954 at the Martha Jackson Gallery.[3] In America he also painted portraits of prominent jazz musicians, including Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.[4] The following year his painting Child and Beast II (1951) was included in the influential exhibition, The New Decade at the Museum of Modern Art which featured the work of twenty-two European painters and sculptors including newcomers like Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, and Pierre Soulages.[3][5] He is particularly noted[by whom?] for his mural work. After 1990 he became much more popular in the Netherlands; he had several big shows in Amsterdam and Bruxelles, organized by director Rudy Fuchs. Also, the CoBrA-museum in Amstelveen organized several shows featuring his work. He became the most famous Dutch CoBrA artist.
Appel's work has been exhibited in a number of galleries, including the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City, Galerie Lelong in Paris, Galerie Ulysses in Vienna, and Gallery LL in Amsterdam. His estate is represented by Galerie Max Hetzler and Almine Rech.[6][7]
Death
Appel died on 3 May 2006 in his home in Zürich, Switzerland. He suffered from a heart ailment.[8] He was buried on 16 May 2006 at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.[9]
Years before his death, Appel established the Karel Appel Foundation, whose purpose is "to preserve [Appel's] artworks, to promote public awareness and knowledge of Karel Appel's oeuvre, and to supervise publication of the Oeuvre Catalogue of the paintings, the works on paper, and the sculptures."[10]
In 2002 a number of Appel's works went missing on the way to his foundation, an event that was not to be resolved before his death. However, in 2012 the works were found in a disused UK warehouse and returned to the foundation.[11]
In the wake of his death, the Foundation (based in Amsterdam) functions as his official estate in addition to its primary service as an image archive. The U.S. copyright representative for the Karel Appel Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.[12]
Gallery
-
'Portrait of Appel with his painting', 1954
-
'Karel Appel, making a wall-painting in Rotterdam', 1955
-
'Window in the Kruiskerk, church in Geleen, 1957; colored stained glass
-
Karel Appel, 1979; signing his prints
-
'no title', 1986; silkscreen
-
'Frog and Cat', 1990; sculpture at Naoshima
-
'Portrait of Rudi Fuchs', 2005; oil-painting & neon
Tributes
On 25 April 2011, Google celebrated the 90th Birthday of Karel Appel with a doodle.[13][14]
"Karel Appel" is the name of a song by art-rock band Poem Rocket from the 2000 record, "Psychogeography."
Public collections
Among the public collections holding works by Karel Appel are:
- Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, The Netherlands
- Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku, Finland
- Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
- Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands
- The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., US
- Collezione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice
- Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki
- Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen
- Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
- Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Palais Tokyo), Paris
- Museum Ludwig, Cologne
- Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna
- Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
- Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
- Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford
- Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam
- Tate Modern, London
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Gallery Delaive, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, US
- Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas
- McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, Knoxville, Tennessee
Bibliography
- Appel, Karel: Psychopathological Notebook. Drawings and Gouaches 1948–1950. Bern – Berlin: Verlag Gachnang & Springer, 1999. ISBN 978-3-906127-57-6
References
- ^ ISBN 978-90-254-1913-4.
- ^ "VIP Lounge - Karel Appel", Radio Netherlands Archives, October 5, 1987
- ^ a b The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, The History and the Collection "Karel Appel (Dutch 1921) Child and Beast II," 126.
- ^ "Karel Appel".
- ^ Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Collection
- ^ "Karel Appel". Anita Shapolsky Gallery NYC. Archived from the original on 19 April 2015.
- ^ "Karel Appel 1921-2006, NL". ArtFacts.net.
- ^ Fox, Margalit (9 May 2006). "Karel Appel, Dutch Expressionist Painter, Dies at 85". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 June 2008.
- ^ "Karel Appel begraven op Père-Lachaise in Parijs". De Telegraaf. 16 May 2006. Retrieved 6 June 2008.
- ^ "The foundation – Karel Appel Foundation". karelappelfoundation.com. Archived from the original on 5 September 2008.
- ^ Alberge, Dalya (14 February 2012). "Dutch artist's works found in British warehouse". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 September 2014.
- ^ ARS list of Artists Represent, Section "A" Archived 2008-06-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Desk, OV Digital (24 April 2023). "25 April: Remembering Karel Appel on Birthday". Observer Voice. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
- ^ "90th Birthday of Karel Appel". www.google.com. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
Further reading
- ISBN 9780956103895.
- Tapié, Michel; Amsterdam (Netherlands). Stedelijk Museum. Karel Appel (Publisher: Amsterdam, author, 1955) OCLC 11554905 (Worldcat link)
- Lyotard, Jean-François (1 September 2009). Karel Appel, A Gesture of Colour. Jean-François Lyotard: Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists. Leuven: Leuven University Press. ISBN 978-90-5867-756-3.
External links
- Galerie Max Hetzler, Karel Appel
- Karel Appel Foundation
- Karel Appel collection at the Israel Museum. Retrieved September 2016.
- Karel Appel at Find a Grave