Beschreibung:

Karel Appel Birds Over the Red Sea 1957 Oil on canvas. 140 x 203.2 cm (55 1/8 x 80 in). Signed and dated “K. Appel ‘57” lower right.
Provenance Martha Jackson Gallery, New York; UB Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, New York Exhibited New York, Martha Jackson Gallery, Karel Appel Painting and Creative Portraits, Oct 1-26, 1957 Catalogue Essay "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 in Harry de Visser and Roland Hagenberg, eds., Karel Appel – the complete sculptures, New York, 1990) Karel Appel is best remembered as a leading figure of the CoBrA art movement between 1949 and 1951. The strength of his paintings, and the vibrancy of his colour spectrum, lie in the way the paint is applied to the canvas, whether by palette knife or directly from the tube. The present lot, Birds Over the Red Sea, was painted in 1957 when Appel visited New York and was introduced to the avant-garde jazz movement lead by Miles Davis. His encounter with this new free-form music, and his exposure to the American Abstract Expressionists, enabled a more fluid and abstract style to permeate his work. In Birds Over the Red Sea, one can still see portions of figures recognisable from earlier paintings, but within a more vibrant and freed composition. Read More