The Dutch painter Karel Appel was born in Amsterdam in 1921. At the age of 15, he took his first painting lessons from his uncle. Between 1940 and 1943, he studied at the Academy of Arts in Amsterdam, where he became friends with Corneille.
Together with Corneille and Constant, he founded the Dutch Group for Experimental Art (Nederlandse Experimentele Groep) in 1948. The CoBrA group originated from this group in the same year. Alongside Asger Jorn, Karel Appel is considered one of the main representatives of eruptive-expressive painting in the CoBrA movement to this day.
Appel applied bright primary colors in impasto to mostly large-format paintings. Influences from “primitive art” as well as children’s drawings recur repeatedly in the motifs and forms of his works. The gestural, often abstract use of color as an expressive, vitalizing element creates a pictorial world of intense emotional content and irrational passion.
From the 1960s onward, Karel Appel also worked on large, multicolored reliefs as well as freestanding sculptures made of wood, polyester, or painted aluminum. In his painting, too, he increasingly shifted toward Abstract Expressionism.
1921: Karel Appel is born in Amsterdam on 25 April.
1940-43: Studies at State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, where he meets the Belgium artist Corneille.
1948: Founds the Nederlandse Experimetele Groep (“Dutch Group for Experimental Art “) with Corneille and Constant, from which the art group CoBrA grows within the same year.
1949: First public commission for a mural in the City Hall of Amsterdam. The final piece causes public protests and has to be covered.
1951: Moves to Paris.
1954: Designs stain-glass windows for churches in Geleen and Zaandam and a wall painting for the UNESCO building in Paris, for which he receives an award at the Venice Biennal.
1960: Awarded the Guggenheim Prize.
As of 1960: Turns away from figurative representation as he increasingly focuses on abstract expressionism.
As of 1994/95: Works primarily in stage design at the Dutch Opera. In 1994 he does the design for the stage sets of the opera Noach, and in 1995 he does the art design of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
1995: Moves to New York and Zurich.
2006: Karel Appel dies on 3 May in Zurich.
