This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Karel Appel was a painter born on April 25, 1921 in Amsterdam, Holland;
his father was a barber. He studied at the Royal Academy in
Amsterdam in 1940-43. Appel sought to develop an impulsive formal
language based on life, in reaction to geometric academicism. He
even founded with others an experimental group. In Paris in 1949,
he focused on mastering creative power and did canvases that "look like
they were done in a rage". (Schatz) An action painter, Appel
gives full rein to his violent expressionism in numerous mural
compositions and in stained glass windows.
In 1958, Appel
established residence in Paris, and in 1959 he came to New York, where
he now spends half the year. He won the UNESCO prize at the
Venice Biennale in 1952, in 1956 the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam
commissioned a large public mural from him which was accepted after
considerable public controversy. He was the youngest artist
awarded first prize at the Guggenheim international exhibition in 1960.
Appel's
career was as turbulent as his paintings. When he did a mural for
the canteen in Amsterdam's city hall, some diners threw their lunches
at it. Some years later when he designed six stained glass
windows for a new church in the town of Zaandam, 300 parishioners
refused to contribute to the building fund. To Appel, painting is
'a battle.' He pops his colors directly out of the tube, smears
them around with fingers, palette knife and occasionally a brush.
When the heavy, screaming colors look curdled enough, Appel appends a
title, usually one that has no relation to the painting, since one
cannot determine any subject matter to the canvas.
Appel is an
impetuous and indefatigable worker, whose creative energy seems
inexhaustible. The world which he creates does not originate from
a circumspect handling of ideas, but from an incessant exploration of
form and color, of material, and especially of the personal
gesture. The images which he evokes in this way are highly
concrete and tangible; "they have the same truth as things that have
grown and developed, that have not merely been invented. Only
after their emergence do Appel's images start to lead their own private
lives, sometimes softly poetical, sometimes grim and aggressive".
(Schatz)
Compiled and submitted August 2004 by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Sources include:
Time Magazine, November 14, 1960
Karel Appel, Work on Paper from Yahoo on the Internet. | |
Biography from Rogallery.com:
|  Christiaan Karel Appel, as has his full name was, was born in his
parents' house at 7 Dapperstraat, Amsterdam. On the ground floor,
his father, Jan Appel, had a barber shop. His mother, born
Johanna Chevalier, was a descendant of French Huguenots. Karel Appel
had three brothers.
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. Nineteen years old he is
admitted to the Rijks-Academie in Amsterdam, where he studied from 1940
to 1943.
In 1946 his first solo show was held in Groningen, the
Netherlands, and he participated in the Jonge Schilders exhibition at
the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. About this time Appel was influenced
first by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, then by Jean Dubuffet.
In 1948 Karel Appel founded Nederlandse Experimentele Group together
with among others Constant, Corneille and Eugene Brands, and later that
year he was one of six who signed the manifest of the COBRA movement in
Paris.
Beside his large production of paintings Karel Appel can
add graphic works and illustrations, sculptures, ceramic works and
large decorations of buildings and rooms. With his colors and childish
lines Karel Appel seduces most of us, because we recognize the
childhood and the fantasy in his pictures. His unspoiled motifs
of children and animals in this period are depicted with strong and
bright colors surrounded by sharp black outlines. While the
motifs stands the way of expression are replaced in the beginning of
the fifthties by a more freely and more emotional way. The
quantities of paint too are used more unrestrained, and for a period he
paints almost three-dimensional paintings.
Børge Birch, who was
friend with Asger Jorn before COBRA, is introduced to Appel and they
form a partnership which leads to several exhibitions - solo in
1949-71-83 and many mixed exhibitions alongside many of his COBRA-
friends. Karel Appels work is exhibited in many gallerys in USA and all
over Europe as well his work is represented in the finest museums in
the world.
Dutch-born Karel Appel was part of the original CoBrA
group (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) whose works were characterized
by bold expressionist forms and raw, intense colors. From 1940 to
1943 Appel studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in
Amsterdam. By 1951, when he painted a mural for the Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam, he had earned an important place in the art
world. His sculpture, paintings, and prints, thickly layered with
color, have a childlike quality about them, but new possibilities
present themselves at each viewing.
He was awarded the UNESCO
Prize at the 27th International Biennale in Venice, and the first prize
at the Guggenheim International Exhibition in New York in 1960. He has
exhibited in galleries worldwide and is represented in the collections
of major museums in the United States, Canada, England, France, and
Holland.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Guggenheim Museum New York
SELECTED AWARDS
He received the UNESCO Prize at the Venice Biennale of 1954
Graphics prize at the Ljubljana Biennial in Yugoslavia
International Prize for Painting at the São Paulo Bienal
Awarded anin
John Solomon Guggenheim Fellowship Award - New York, USA |
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