KAREL APPEL 1921-2006 The Owls - De Uilen Signed and dated ‘48, titled on the reverse Oil on canvas 60 by 40 cm. Provenance: Galérie Colette Allandy, Paris Collection Anton Rooskens, Amsterdam Collection Benjamin Bernstein, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Private Collection, Amsterdam Christie’s Amsterdam, 10 December 1992, lot no. 307, illustrated Private Collection, The Netherlands Private Collection, The Netherlands, acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited: Amstelveen, Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Cobra Cities. De kunstenaars en de metropool. The Artist and their Metropoles, 2 June - 7 October 2012 This work is registered in the Archive of the Karel Appel Foundation (R) KAREL APPEL CoBrA, originating from the “Experimentele Groep”was established in 1948 by a group of enthusiastic young artists. The initiators included Asger Jorn from Denmark, Pierre Alechinsky from Belgium and Karel Appel en Constant from The Netherlands. Having suffered from the terrors of the Second World War there was an outcry for artistic freedom. In 1948 Constant wrote: ”a painting no longer is a structure of colours and lines, but a beast, a night, a cry, a person, or all of that together” (Manifesto in Reflex, 8 October). In the same year as he created The Owls- De Uilen Karel Appel painted Cry for Freedom (Vrijheidsschreeuw), which is considered to be symbolic for the whole movement. With its pure red, green, blue and yellow colours it was strongly reminiscent of Asger Jorn’s works during the final years of the war. Karel Appel’s work at that time was strongly influenced by Picasso and Miro. CoBrA became synonymous with a powerful expressionist artistic trend combining figurative and abstract tendencies. Karel Appel and his contemporaries found their inspriration in the drawings of children, the mentally ill and in primitive, unspoiled cultures. Appel and other CobrA artists sought the images of our fantasy, hidden in the subconscious. They created their images influenced by the theories of Carl Jung. In 1950, Karel Appel visited in Paris the exhibition following the “Congres International de Psychiatrie”. He bought the catalogue and illustrated it spontaneously.Animals were very important elements in Karel Appel’s work from 1948 onwards. Their seemingly simplicity makes us regard them as clichés, representing the emptiness in which the stereotype of primitivity becomes clear. In The Owls - De Uilen the treatment of the material, the touch is self-reliant and one can observe how soon the brushstrokes change into a clear pattern before our eyes. The work has set up in fast and sure strokes, in primary colours. The thick application of paint illustrates the sense of childlike naivity, a style that would come to dominate his work for the remainder of his career. In The Owls - De Uilen “… 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 the primitive art and children’s drawings… (F. Steininger, Karel Appel, Bratislava 2005, p.39). In the best tradition of the CoBrA characteristics the present work shows all the qualities of an animal, just like a child would draw it.