Karel Appel

Volume 14 of the Catalogue raisonné of the Orozco collection of artist and illustrated books as well as prints, dedicated to Miquel Barceló, Javier Mariscal, Gilbert & George, Antonio Saura, Edouard Pignon, Karel Appel, Sol Lewitt, Jose Maria Sicilia, Pierre Alechinsky, Sam Francis,  Marco del Re, Sean Scully, Aki Kuroda, G. Garouste, J. Immendorff, P. Antoniuccu, O. Gagnere, G. Penone,  R. Combas,  P. Skira,  Broto, V. Bioules, Markus Lüpertz, E. Allington, V. Novarina,  S. Merlino, M. Kaminsky, G. Barthelemy, W. Alberti, Christian Boltanski, F. Martin, G. Da Gioz, E. Garouste, M. Bonetti, P. Moignard, B. Flanagan, W. Buttner, M. Paszko, V. Corpet,  H. Delprat, I. Champion-Metadier, Sixtus, D. Labauvie, F. Lamore, G. Traquandi, D. Diao, P. Dusapin, G. Gasiorowsky, P. Nivollet, P. Buraglio, G. Jeanclos,  W. Dahn, H.-P. Adamsky, E. Bach, S. Szczesny, R. Fetting, J. G. Dokoupil, P. Bokanowski, A. Messager, C. Viallat, E. Montrelay, D. Tremblett, M. Neumann, J. Beuys, P. Raynaud, Ph. Favier, R. Thomas, N. Prangenberg, O. Oudiette, C. Boutin, A. Leonov, S. Ristelhueber, Y. Bresson, D. Orlopp, A. Merz, P. Faucher, R. Barry, M. Henich. It describes the pieces of the collection, the circumstances under which they were produced, references to the museums throughout the world that keep a copy of the piece described, the appropriate catalogue references, their passage through auction houses, etc. and photographs of the pieces.

Volume 13 of the Catalogue raisonné of the Orozco collection of artist and illustrated books as well as prints, dedicated to Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, Enrico Baj, Alan Davie, Jim Dine,  Oyvind Fahlstrom, Sam Francis, Robert Indiana, Antonio Saura, Alfred Jensen, Asger Jorn, Allan Kaprow, Alfred Leslie, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Mel Ramos, Joan Mitchell, Kiki O.K., Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Reinhoud, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, Kimber Smith, K.R.H., Sonderberg, Walasse Ting, Bram Van Velde, Bengt Lindström, Paul Rebeyrolle, Bata Mihailovitch &Tom Wesselmann. It describes the pieces of the collection, the circumstances under which they were produced, references to the museums throughout the world that keep a copy of the piece described, the appropriate catalogue references, their passage through auction houses, etc. and photographs of the pieces.

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Écrit pour et publié dans le catalogue de l’exposition Karel Appel – Figures, Paysages, présentée à la Galerie Almine Rech à Paris du 12 octobre au 16 novembre 2019, ce texte résume l’état des connaissances sur l’importance historique de Paris dans l’œuvre et la carrière de Karel Appel. Bien que l’artiste y ait vécu très longtemps, le sujet reste peu exploré. Après deux importantes expositions parisiennes, l’une en 2015 au Centre Pompidou et l’autre en 2017 au Musée d’art moderne de Paris, ce texte en complète les catalogues par des informations provenant de la volumineuse biographie de Karel Appel par Cathérine van Houts, parue en 2000, qui n’existe qu’en langue Néerlandaise. On y découvre une implication beaucoup plus intime de l’artiste que l’on ne le supposait avec la Nouvelle École de Paris, en même temps que l’exception qu’il représentait par rapport à ce contexte, dans la mesure où il réussit dès les années 50 à construire sa carrière simultanément en Europe et aux États-Unis.

Originally written for and published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Karel Appel – Figures, Paysages held at Almine Rech Gallery in Paris from October 12 through November 16 2019, this text summarizes the present state of knowledge about the crucial importance of Paris with respect to the work and the career of Karel Appel. Following two important Parisian exhibitions, one in 2015 at the Centre Pompidou and the other in 2017 at the Musée d’art moderne de Paris, the text complements their catalogues with insights gained from the voluminous Karel Appel biography by Cathérine van Houts, published in 2000, which exists merely in Dutch language. It brings to the fore that the artist was much more intimately involved with the Nouvelle École de Paris than previously assumed, while he appears to have been rather exceptional within the art context of the 1950ies, simultaneously constructing his career on both sides of the Atlantic.

This thesis explores the emergence of the Cobra Movement in the Netherlands, where the War and the Holocaust were especially brutal, and where the Post-War socio-political atmosphere was toxically stagnant. It is my purpose to contradict the interpretations of Cobra art that deem it cheerfully optimistic in favor of my own interpretation of the movement as a post-traumatic response to the Post-War Dutch condition. A thorough examination of the War and Reconstruction in the Netherlands informs the atmosphere from which Cobra emerged. I then expand on trauma theory to provide psychological evidence for my own interpretation of Dutch Cobra as a spiritual, philosophical, and political response to the Dutch experience of World War II and the reconstruction years. I identify the movement’s two central goals to be spiritual and artistic rebirth, and the systematic restructuring of society through the dissolution of traditional artistic institutions. Dutch Cobra turned to Danish avant-gardism and modern philosophy for ideas that could be transformed into tools to achieve their goals. The resulting Dutch Cobra ideology proposed a quasi-Marxist social revolution through art, and integrated Danish concepts such as anti-aestheticism, spontaneity, folklore, intersubjectivity, and materiality. Works by Corneille Beverloo, Karel Appel, and Constant Nieuwenhuys are visually analyzed to demonstrate Dutch Cobra’s central goals and the ideology developed to achieve them. These visual analyses also situate the movement within its post-traumatic, socio-political context. At its core, this thesis demonstrates the Dutch Cobra artists’ unwavering desire to heal both society and themselves.


This thesis received Highest Thesis Honors and won the Madeline Caviness Thesis Prize.

After abstraction had been the avant-garde orthodoxy in the 1950ies, it was replaced during the following decade by a new realism. As Karel Appel usually is associated with the 1950ies, it might come as a surprise that one of his works illustrates the catalog cover of a traveling exhibitions that made the new realism’s breakthrough in Europe. This text explores the artist’s unexpected vicinity to the young avant-garde, Le Nouveau Réalisme, while he was already internationally famous for quite another kind of art.
The text is included in the book Karel Appel. Collages 1958-1967, published in 2021 by Jahn & Jahn München, edited by Nadinne Seligmann and distributed by Walther & Franz König, Cologne.