Karel Appel was an accomplished painter, sculptor and poet, and a founding member of the avant-garde movement CoBrA. He developed an international reputation for his expressive colours and forms that rejected modish aesthetics.

Born on April 25, 1921, Appel studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 1940 to 1943. His early work was inspired by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Jean Dubuffet. In 1946, Appel appeared in his first group show at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum with fellow artists Eugène Brands, Guillaume Corneille and Anton Rooskens. Together they formed the Dutch Experimental Group, which was the cradle of the CoBrA movement. Unified by a doctrine of complete freedom of colour and form, as well as a shared interest in modernism and Surrealism, CoBrA’s artists also embraced folk and children’s art, which characterized Appel’s style. His work distinguished itself through colourful, semiabstract compositions, and dense layering of pigments with powerful brushwork.

In 1953, Appel was given his first important solo exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. The following year he represented the Netherlands at the 27th Venice Biennale, and he won the UNESCO award. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was commissioned to paint numerous murals for public places. Appel worked simultaneously in painting and sculpture, and his figurative sculptures made of wood and metal share the crude, imaginative expressionism found in his paintings.

As a result of his extensive travels through Europe and the Americas, Appel developed international status. He participated in many solo and group exhibitions, and his work has been featured at the Tate, the MoMA and other key museums and galleries worldwide. Appel was the recipient of the Dutch royal award in 1968 and was decorated again in 1999; he also received the French Légion d’Honneur, in the grade of Officer, in 2003.