Animal Fantastique, 1976

Karel Appel   Master Artists

Karel Appel is a Dutch artist born in Amsterdam in 1921 (He died in 2006). From 1940 to 1943, he studied at the Beaux-Art academy in Amsterdam.

In 1948, with Corneille and Constant, Karel Appel creates the experimental group "Reflex", the Dutch division of the CoBra group, a movement gathering artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam and born in reaction to the fight between abstraction and figuration. The artists of this movement gather around their common interest in primitive, naive, and popular art, and the idea that everyone can practice art.

Influenced by the artwork of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse, Karel Appel is notably known for his numerous wood panels in relief and his wall paintings about childhood. At the limit of abstraction, his artworks are characterized by the use of bright and pure colors in a naive and charged aesthetic.

In 2009, the Lelong Gallery holds an exhibition for him under the name "Peintures 2000-2001" and in 2012; his artworks are presented during the exhibition "Cobra- Sous le regard d'un passionné" at the LAAC in Dunkerque.