Christiaan Karel Appel (1921-2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He discovered the art of painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940's.
Appel was one of the founding members of the influential, albeit short lived (1948-1951), avant-garde movement CoBRA, the name derived from the initials of the 3 cities the founding members were from, Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amersterdam, which had all been under Nazi rule during WWII.
Appel, and other CoBra members, took inspiration from children's artwork, pre-historic images, and outsider art. He was profoundly moved by the atrocities of the war and explored those themes in his postwar work.
Selected Exhibitions:
1953, 1958 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belguim
1957 Institute of Contemporary Art, London
1965 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Selected Awards:
1954 - UNESCO Prize at the Venice Biennale
Graphics prize at the Ljubljana Biennial in Yugoslavia
1959 International Prize for Painting at the São Paulo Bienal
1960 1st prize Guggenheim International Exhibition in New York City, NY
John Solomon Guggenheim Fellowship Award - New York City, NY