About the Exhibit - Figures et Paysages

During Fiac, 2019, Almine Rech held its first monographic exhibition dedicated to Karel Appel. 

 “Amsterdam was the city of my youth; Paris was that of my evolution. What I learned there beats all the rest” - Karel Appel 

It was in Paris he formed CoBrA, a European avant-garde group with Corneille, Constant and Asger Jorn. 

“You have to learn it all, then forget it and start again like a child. This is the inner evolution.” - Karel Appel

“Through play, we renew contact with childhood – My art is childlike.” - Karel Appel 

“Every day I have to be awake to escape.. ..The whole world is sleepy. It is a real fight to be awake, to see everything new, for the first time in your life.” - Karel Appel 

“The duty of the artist is not to be calculating in any sense, so that he may be free himself of human emotions while carried by the universal forces of life. Only then does one not think about making art, or about styles, or directions. Something comes about, something happens.” - Karel Appel

About the Artist 

Karel Appel was a Dutch painter that was born in 1921 and died in 2006. He studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement Cobra. 

“COBRA artists was their unrestrained use of strong colors, along with violent handwritings and figuration which can be either frightening or humorous. Their art was alive with subhuman figures in order to mirror the terror and weakness of our time unlike the dehumanized art of Abstraction.” (source) 

The Karel Appel Estate is represented by Almine Rech Gallery.