1. Karel Appel started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s.
18 Facts About Karel Appel
1. 2.
Karel Appel was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement CoBrA in 1948.
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Karel Appel was an avid sculptor and has had works featured in MoMA and other museums worldwide.
4.
Christiaan Karel Appel was born on 25 April 1921 in his parents' house at Dapperstraat 7 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
5.
Karel Appel's mother, born Johanna Chevallier, was a descendant of French Huguenots.
6.
At fourteen, Karel Appel produced his first real painting on canvas, a still life of a fruit basket.
7.
From 1940 to 1943, during the German occupation, Karel Appel studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, and it was there he met the young painter Corneille and, some years later, Constant; they became close friends for years.
8.
Karel Appel's parents opposed his choice to become an artist, leading him to leave home; this was necessary because he needed to hide from the German police so that he would not be picked up and sent to Germany to work in the weapons industry.
9.
Karel Appel was influenced by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and the French brute-art artist Jean Dubuffet.
10.
In 1948 Karel Appel joined CoBrA together with the Dutch artists Corneille, Constant, and Jan Nieuwenhuys.
11.
Karel Appel used this very intensively; his 1949 fresco 'Questioning Children' in Amsterdam City Hall caused controversy and was covered up for ten years.
12.
Karel Appel's work has been exhibited in a number of galleries, including the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City, Galerie Lelong in Paris, Galerie Ulysses in Vienna, and Gallery LL in Amsterdam.
13.
Karel Appel had multiple exhibitions of his works in the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen, Netherlands.
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Karel Appel's estate is represented by Galerie Max Hetzler and Almine Rech.
15.
Karel Appel died on 3 May 2006 in his home in Zurich, Switzerland.
16.
Karel Appel was buried on 16 May 2006 at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.
17.
In 2002 a number of Karel Appel's works went missing on the way to his foundation, an event that was not to be resolved before his death.
18.
The US copyright representative for the Karel Appel Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.