Karel Appel

'I am an expressionist. I want to paint with my feelings!' This was how the Dutch painter Karel Appel (1921-2006) described his artistic project. Grey Nude/Nude Gris (1960) is made with oil on board and is characteristic of Appel’s style: thick layers of paint, violent brush work and reductive figuration.

In 1948 Appel helped found CoBrA, an artists’ group that included several northern European expressionists. Some of the best known CoBrA members were Asger Jorn and Bille Jacobsen from Denmark, Appel, Corneille and Constant from the Netherlands, and Alechinsky and Dotremont from Belgium.

Appel and other CoBrA artists were influenced by Surrealism and Dadaism in the sense that that they sought inspiration from areas outside the conventional artworld. The group members rejected what they regarded as bourgeois art, along with its traditions and history. Popular art, primitive art, children’s drawings and drawings by psychiatric patients inspired them to create more spontaneous and intuitive works than did the lyrical-abstract Parisian School, which dominated painting at the time. The CoBrA movement lasted only about three years, but during that time it put on exhibitions, wrote manifestoes and published short biographical monographs documenting its members’ theories.

After CoBrA disbanded in 1951, Appel moved to Paris and New York where he became the first CoBrA member to achieve independent international recognition. He joined the artist group known as Art Informel or Art Autre, a central figure of which was Michel Tapié. With this new affiliation he exhibited alongside American abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Appel portrayed several famous jazz musicians (Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and others) and produced many sculptures and art prints. But no matter the art form or genre, all his works are characterized by a brutal, imaginative intensity stemming from his desire to express strong feelings.

Appel’s paintings may at first glance seem purely abstract. We can nevertheless often find animals, fantasy figures or masks. In Grey Nude/Nude Gris (1960) we see the suggestion of a figure in an indefinable space. The picture’s energy and 'message' lie in the layers of colour, in the rhythm and the violent way in which paint has almost been thrown at the canvas and manipulated with pallet knives, brushes and fingers. With these means viewers are drawn into the painting process in an intuitive rather than intellectual way. Appel was known for using strikingly beautiful women as models for his paintings. How does Grey Nude/Nude Gris differ from other depictions of women in this exhibition? See for example works by Mari Slaattelid, Gerhard Richter, Ida Ekblad, Richard Prince or Martin Kippenberger.

IP