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Artist or Maker: Karel Appel (Dutch, b. 1921)
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Provenance: On loan to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from 1953 until 1959
Acquired from the artist by Dr C. Richartz, Amsterdam, 1959.
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Exhibited: Amsterdam, Kunstzaal Van Lier, 1953.
(possibly) Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Karel Appel, 31 October - 11 November 1953 (as: Homme et Animal)
Tel Aviv, The Tel Aviv Museum, Abstract and Surrealist paintings, January - March 1955
Krefeld, Museum Haus Lange, Untitled, 26 September - 27 November 1957
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Notes: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE GERMAN COLLECTOR
In 1950, right in the middle of the Cobra period, Karel Appel leaves for Paris, where he more or less will stay until 1957. After 1957 New York will be his headquarters. From 1952 on, the year in which 'Child and Beast V' was painted, he received more and more international attention, especially with the help of the then famous French art critic and -promoter Michel Tapié.
Willemijn Stokvis writes about this increasing interest for his work: "This must have been an enormous stimulus for Karel Appel. It meant that he was able to buy more and better materials. Day and night he worked like a madman, and in 1952, just at the end of Cobra, his style of painting changed strongly: Spontaneity started to gain the upper hand again. Colour fields are being released from their demarcations, the line breaks away from its function of binding together or accentuate. Appels' mythical creatures are flooded with the material, their forms now loose clarity, a wave of emotion flows over them, they are presented in wild strokes, and as a result mixed colour fields and lines can not be recognised anymore as separate elements. The childlike surprised and toy-ish character of the creatures now disappears. They are growing and are becoming more demonic. They are completely one with the material they arise from. Deeper in the fifties one increasingly sees separate, usually vague signs of eyes, nose, mouth etc. suggesting their presence, in coincidental forms of paintspots, rendered during the rage of painting. This manner of representing his images in and as a result of the material will from now on determine the oeuvre of Appel. (...)
Appel is totally familiar with his material, the paint, and his direct and spontaneous approach of the empty canvas with this material is clearly visible in his compostions, which in fact are no more and no less the results of a overwhelming and enthusiastic vitality." (see: W. Stokvis, Cobra, Geschiedenis, voorspel en betekenis van een beweging in de kunst van na de tweede wereldoorlog, Amsterdam 1990, p. 189)
The artist himself once stated: "I paint from the material, because the material is just as rich as the mind, if not richer. It is inmeasurable energy, it can be tranformed by contrasts endlessly, but it can also be mingled. The accomplishment is unimaginable and is still imaginable.
Any definition of an object, expression, work of art, is an attack to reality.
No realism.
No idealism.
Intermediarism.
(see: Karel Appel over Karel Appel, Amsterdam 1971, p. 99)
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