FINE ART INVESTMENTS SINCE 1978
CONTEMPORARY PRINTS
Karel APPEL
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Karel Appel was an influential Dutch painter whose figurative abstractions employed expressive colors and
forms. Like Jean Dubuffet, Appel found inspiration in the artwork of children and the rejection of
sophisticated aesthetic tastes. “Painting, like passion, is an emotion full of truth and rings a living sound, like
the roar coming from the lion's breast,” he reflected. “To paint is to destroy what preceded. I never try to
make a painting, but a chunk of life.” Born on April 25, 1921 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, he went on to study
at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and had his first solo exhibition in 1946. Inspired by the work of
Paul Klee and Joan Miró, Appel began experimenting with a rudimentary approach of describing subject
matter reminiscent of folk art. In 1948, he helped form the CoBrA group (an acronym for the cities the artists
were from: Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam), along with Asger Jorn, Constant, Corneille and others
who were united in their rejection of rationalism and geometric abstraction. Following the dissolution of
CoBrA in 1952, Appel joined Art Informel, another collection of abstract artists which included Michel Tapié
and Henri Michaux. Through the following decades the artist continued his engagement with painterly
expression and was the subject of several solo exhibitions. He died on May 3, 2006 in Zürich, Switzerland.
Appel’s works are presently held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art
Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Title: "Two Flowering Heads"
*Pencil Signed LR
Year: 1976
Medium: Original Screenprint
Limited edition: 12/100
Sheet size: 30" x 42"
Price: $2,200
Title: "Couple in the Night"
*Signed LR in white China marker *Rare
Year: 1977
Medium: Original Color Woodcut with Carborundum
Limited edition: EA, (aside from the standard limited
edition of 110)
Sheet size: 29" x 35"
Price: $4,000