KAREL APPEL (Netherlands, 1921 - Switzerland, 2006). Untitled, 1975. Acrylic on cardboard adhered to canvas. Signed in the lower right corner. Enclosed certificate signed by Guy Pieters and Mr. Nieuwenhuizen-Segaar. Measurements: 57 x 75,5 cm; 84 x 102 cm (frame). Karel Appel's work was noted for its chromatic violence and material pastiness. He often made pseudo-human or mythological creatures like the one we are dealing with, which can be read as phobic allegories. Primitivism and infantile or naïff art are reinvindicated by the artist and his group CoBrA (formed in the fifties) to reject the civilizing reason that had led Europe to devastation. Appel's language was based on the conjugation of expressionist aggressiveness and childlike simplicity linked to surrealism. He always remained within the limits of figuration. Karel Appel was a painter, sculptor and graphic artist, and is currently considered the most vigorous artist of the post-war generation in his country. In 1948 he founded, together with Corneille, Jorn and Alechinsku, the CoBrA International Group, which was decisive in the development and expansion of European automatism between the 1940s and 1950s. During the Nazi occupation of Holland, Apple wandered around the country to avoid being sent to work in Germany. In 1946 he had his first solo exhibition in Groningen, in which the imprint of Dubuffet, with whom he would come to share certain theoretical concepts, was already visible. His first sculptures, pioneering in the assembly of waste materials, date from 1947. Some artists, rejecting the rigor and sectarianism of the surrealist organization, founded the CoBrA group (abbreviations for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, cities from which Appel, Corneille and Constant, who signed the inaugural manifesto together with Jorn, Noiret and Dotremont, came from). The CoBrA painters pursued a more spontaneous work, catering to local cultural traditions and collecting fantastic imagery. The group soon disbanded in 1951, but some of its members, notably Appel, Jorn and Alechinsky, maintained its spirit in the following decades. Their painting is characterized by a great expressionist charge linked to the figures of Max Pechstein and Edward Munich, two of the great Nordic expressionists. His work is made with dense impasto and violent color games, which denote the agitated character of Nordic expressionism. Later, his language evolved in a softer line, approaching Hand Edge Painting. Appel was a tireless artist who explored multiple languages, from sculpture, ceramics, mural painting, stained glass or engraving. During his long artistic career he received numerous awards and collaborated with artists from other disciplines such as the poet Allen Ginsberg or the choreographer Min Tanaka. His first successes came in 1953, with the exhibition at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and his participation in the Biennial of Sao Paulo (he would return in 1959 and win the international prize for painting), and in 1954, when he received the UNESCO prize at the Venice Biennale and exhibited in Paris and New York. Appel is represented at the Guggenheim Museum and MoMA in New York, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Tate Gallery in London, the Albertina in Vienna, the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Fine Arts Museum in Dordrecht, among many others.