Karel Appel
CoBrA founder, and the painter who wanted the picture to look as though a child had refused to be careful.
Karel Appel was born in Amsterdam in 1921 and was one of the six founders of CoBrA in a Paris cafe in 1948, alongside Constant, Corneille, Asger Jorn and Christian Dotremont. The group lasted three years; the manner lasted him a lifetime. Appel painted animals, children and half-formed creatures in raw colour and paint thick enough to stand off the surface, and defended the roughness as the point rather than the price of speed. He settled in Paris, later worked in New York and Monaco, and moved outwards from painting into painted wood reliefs, sculpture and ceramics before his death in 2006.
The range under his name is unusually wide, and a valuation turns first on where in a sixty-year career a work sits: the CoBrA and early 1950s paintings are a different market from the later output, and the two are not always distinguishable to an untrained eye. Gouaches on paper, prints, painted wood reliefs and polychrome sculpture all appear regularly. Signature and date carry weight, as does whether the work has been seen by the Karel Appel Foundation, which holds the archive and is the reference point for questions of attribution.
If you own a work by Karel Appel
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.