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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Archive of the Karel Appel Foundation.
Painted in 1951, Cycliste embodies Karel Appel’s desire to produce positivity out of chaos. The work exemplifies Appel’s proclivity towards the spirited and depicts a young child riding a bicycle in the idiosyncratic style characteristic of the CoBrA artists. Aside from his sparse use of line to communicate the figurative representation, Appel’s painted language consists primarily of a patchwork of unmediated fields of color. Karel himself claimed that his “color [was] always alive because [he was] always busy with the light” (K. Appel quoted by Rudi Fuchs in “Karel Appel in Conversation with Rudi Fuchs: Monaco, September 1990,” Karel Appel Retrospective 1945-2005, Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Slovakia, 2005, p. 23). With his youthful approach to painting, Karel captured the willed positivity of his contemporaries, while simultaneously continuing the long-meditated Dutch fascination with painted light.
Karel Appel’s Cycliste produces an emotional response far from that which inspired the artistic movement from which it was conceived. The CoBrA movement was born amidst the tumultuous aftermath of World War II. Appel founded the movement with several other European artists in rejection of the Western cultural canon, as well as in reaction to the all-too-fresh memory of the horrors of war. The CoBrA artists gravitated towards a manner of painting which idolized primitivism—that which pervaded works preserved from the early ages of mankind. Karel said of his own artistic process: “Painting is really about paring away, about simplifying. This is why I once said that the only people who can produce anything positive out of chaos are artists” (K. Appel quoted by Rudi Fuchs in “Karel Appel in Conversation with Rudi Fuchs: Monaco, September 1990,” Karel Appel Retrospective 1945-2005, Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Slovakia, 2005, p. 19).
Painted in 1951, Cycliste embodies Karel Appel’s desire to produce positivity out of chaos. The work exemplifies Appel’s proclivity towards the spirited and depicts a young child riding a bicycle in the idiosyncratic style characteristic of the CoBrA artists. Aside from his sparse use of line to communicate the figurative representation, Appel’s painted language consists primarily of a patchwork of unmediated fields of color. Karel himself claimed that his “color [was] always alive because [he was] always busy with the light” (K. Appel quoted by Rudi Fuchs in “Karel Appel in Conversation with Rudi Fuchs: Monaco, September 1990,” Karel Appel Retrospective 1945-2005, Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Slovakia, 2005, p. 23). With his youthful approach to painting, Karel captured the willed positivity of his contemporaries, while simultaneously continuing the long-meditated Dutch fascination with painted light.
Karel Appel’s Cycliste produces an emotional response far from that which inspired the artistic movement from which it was conceived. The CoBrA movement was born amidst the tumultuous aftermath of World War II. Appel founded the movement with several other European artists in rejection of the Western cultural canon, as well as in reaction to the all-too-fresh memory of the horrors of war. The CoBrA artists gravitated towards a manner of painting which idolized primitivism—that which pervaded works preserved from the early ages of mankind. Karel said of his own artistic process: “Painting is really about paring away, about simplifying. This is why I once said that the only people who can produce anything positive out of chaos are artists” (K. Appel quoted by Rudi Fuchs in “Karel Appel in Conversation with Rudi Fuchs: Monaco, September 1990,” Karel Appel Retrospective 1945-2005, Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Slovakia, 2005, p. 19).