Corneille, born Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo on July 3, 1922, in Liège, Belgium, was a Dutch artist renowned for his vibrant and expressive works. He was a co-founder of the avant-garde CoBrA movement, an influential post-World War II European art collective that also included Karel Appel and Asger Jorn. The name CoBrA is derived from the initials of the members’ home cities: Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam.
In 1950, Corneille moved from Amsterdam to Paris, where he lived with photographer Henny Riemens until 1968. The couple, married in 1955, traveled extensively to places like North Africa, North America, the Caribbean, and South America. These travels profoundly influenced his work. From 1960, he returned to figurative art, featuring women, birds, flowers, and characters as recurring motifs.
Corneille’s work evolved significantly, maintaining a vibrant use of color and lyrical quality. He believed painting was a calling rather than a hobby or job. His later years were spent in Paris, where he worked in seclusion. Corneille passed away on September 5, 2010, in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and was buried there alongside Vincent van Gogh. Today his work is still revered by both Dutch and International collectors, both for his strikingly intuitive compositional prowess and his art-historical significance.
In the late 1970s Nico Delaive had first entered the gallery world and had invited many artists to make graphic works and editions. Corneille was one of them and Nico was in close contact with him ever since. In the following decades he would spend many hours with him, together with Walasse Ting and Karel Appel. On some occasions watching them all work alongside each other in a studio at the Weteringsplantsoen in central Amsterdam which Nico had set up for them.
