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Lot Essay
Karel Appel's Head is a pivotal work from 1953, an important year in the artist's career. The painting was purchased by Paul Facchetti in Paris and was later owned by Martha Jackson, the American gallerist. Jackson (fig. 1) would introduce Appel to the American art world the following year, in 1954, with his first solo exhibition in her New York Gallery. This show ultimately opened the door for Appel's international recognition and initiated the artist's relationship with Jackson that continued for more than twenty years.
A founding member of the COBRA movement in Amsterdam, in 1950 Appel moved to Paris, where he saw the work of Jean Dubuffet, whose art brut style had a formative influence on him. Deeply rooted in art that had been marginalized -- of the insane, of children -- art brut eschewed Modernist idealism in favor of a more primitive and expressive style. The thick application of paint, bold colors and expressive brushstrokes of Head, 1953, illustrates the sense of childlike naïveté that developed from Appel's Paris years, a style that would come to dominate his work for the remainder of his career.
"Appel presents a form of painting full of emotion, immediacy and strength, which is tied to the archetypical, the original and the human image. The rough, simplified figuration fully reflects primitive art and children's drawings. Whenever in the future more dissolved, thus more abstract images, develop, then still figuration forms a central issue in Appel's world of images" (F. Steininger, Karel Appel, Bratislava, 2005, p. 39).
A founding member of the COBRA movement in Amsterdam, in 1950 Appel moved to Paris, where he saw the work of Jean Dubuffet, whose art brut style had a formative influence on him. Deeply rooted in art that had been marginalized -- of the insane, of children -- art brut eschewed Modernist idealism in favor of a more primitive and expressive style. The thick application of paint, bold colors and expressive brushstrokes of Head, 1953, illustrates the sense of childlike naïveté that developed from Appel's Paris years, a style that would come to dominate his work for the remainder of his career.
"Appel presents a form of painting full of emotion, immediacy and strength, which is tied to the archetypical, the original and the human image. The rough, simplified figuration fully reflects primitive art and children's drawings. Whenever in the future more dissolved, thus more abstract images, develop, then still figuration forms a central issue in Appel's world of images" (F. Steininger, Karel Appel, Bratislava, 2005, p. 39).