Beschreibung:

Karel Appel Personage 1983 oil on canvas 76 x 66 in. (193 x 167.6 cm) Signed "Appel" lower right; further signed, titled, and dated "K. Appel 'Personage' 1983" on the stretcher.
Provenance Anderson Gallery, Buffalo Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Buffalo, New York, Anderson Gallery, Karel Appel An Historical Overview, January 14 - February 11, 1995 (prolonged until March 21, 1995) Literature Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Karel Appel An Historical Overview, 1995, Nr. 38 Catalogue Essay “For me, the material is the paint itself. The paint expresses itself.” KAREL APPEL Karel Appel’s productivity was rooted in a spirit of spontaneity; revolting against the psychological gesture of Surrealism, Appel was integral in the formation of Cobra, a pan-European collective of six artists. Appel’s own Dutch heritage brought a needed surge of color to the style of Cobra. The result was a mixture of the kinetic and the exuberantly aesthetic, a distinctly European response to the American concept of Action Painting popular among the extolled Abstract Expressionists. Appel carried this spirit in tow throughout the next seven decades. In Personage, 1983, Appel delivers to us a striking celebration of free form and relentless color, a stunning example of a mature artist’s work. Appel’s canvas spreads nearly six by seven feet, large enough to demand the attention of the viewer, while simultaneously posing a sense of weightlessness and fluidity within the compositional boundaries. In this way, Personage is not strictly a figurative depiction, and yet the title clearly draws our awareness to the central figure. Wide and scantly featured, aside with a comical cobalt nose and wisps of hair, our central figure is barely an artist’s caricature. Appel’s figure in Personage invites us into a delightful world of his own, where color and form are wonderfully transient, as in a child’s painting where we become immersed in a fanciful world. Read More