Corneille (1922-2010)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more A PRIVATE COLLECTION, FRANCE
Corneille (1922-2010)

Femme et oiseau

Details
Corneille (1922-2010)
Femme et oiseau
signed and dated 'Corneille 53' (upper right); signed, titled and dated 'Femme et oiseau Corneille '53' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
50 x 55.5 cm.
Painted in 1953
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the family of the present owner.
Literature
F.T. Gribling, Corneille, Amsterdam 1972, no. 14 (illustrated, unpaged).
A. Laude, Corneille. Le roi-image, Paris 1973 (illustrated, p. 21).
Special Notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Brought to you by

Lisa Snijders
Lisa Snijders

Lot Essay

Together with Karel Appel and Constant, Corneille was one of the founding members of Cobra. Rejecting rational Western culture as well as its rules and conventions concerning art, the international movement of Danish, Belgian and Dutch artists aimed to provoke while referring to forms of expression like primitive art, prehistoric art, art from the Middle Ages, children's drawings and art of the mentally handicapped. Corneille was an active member of the group, not only as a productive painter, but also as a poet for Cobra magazine.

Corneille is an autodidact in painting, a realist with a utopian vision of the world and of reality. His works are exuberant in colour and do seem like fragments from a poem or a narrative. This is not so surprising, as Corneille has written many letters to his artist's friends throughout his life while traveling to the most divergent places and cities all over the world. He always documented his experiences and ideas in writing as well as in paintings and drawings.

Besides his journeys, sources of information and inspiration for Corneille are also nature, ancient cultures, primeval tribes, classical music and literature.
In the paintings and drawings made around the 1950s, one can clearly see the inspiration of the Africa travels undertaken by him during that time. The translation of the impressions obtained over there - like the forces of nature and Primitive art into images - are obvious and omnipresent in his works of that period.

Corneille has developed a significant style from the 1950s onwards; playful, intimate paintings and gouaches with graphical lining; his palette of soft colors and his own world of imagination. This is all very much enforced by and retraceable to his encounter with the artist Jacques Doucet (1924-1994), who was on his turn a great admirer of the artist Joan Miró (1893-1983). This influence is still very visible in the works of Corneille.

In the following years, his paintings and drawings are significantly full with appearances of mythical themes and motives. The lining becomes more loose and light and on top of that an army of fabulous creatures comes dancing into the compositions. Birds and fishes with balloon like heads in fast lines and tender colors are hovering on the imaginary spaces.

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