Biography: Karel Appel

Portraits of Karel Appel the younger, one with Dutch poet Bert Schierbeek, and of Appel in 2004, two years before his death.

KAREL APPEL (DUTCH, 1921-2006)

Karel Appel was among the stars of the 1950s-1960s international art world. In 1948, he was a co-founder of CoBrA, a group of Northern European artists whose work was related to, but developed independently from, American Abstract Expressionism. He moved to Paris, which, along with New York, became his main base. Like other CoBrA artists, Appel retained figuration at first in his freely painted, vigorous and colorful paintings, though he later went through non-objective stages. Appel was prolific and constantly reinvented himself as an artist during his long, active career. In addition to paintings, drawings and sculptures, he painted murals and worked in ceramics, stage design and stained glass. Appel also was a poet and recorded experimental music. In 1954, he won the UNESCO Prize at the Venice Biennale. Appel’s work is in museums across the world, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn., London’s Tate Gallery, the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.