CoBrA Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Amstelveen
July 3, 2022 – January 15, 2023
Corneille’s 100th birthday will be celebrated on July 3, 2022, at the Cobra Museum with a festive presentation of his collection. He started his artistic journey by exploring and drawing inspiration from other artists, nature, and the people around him.
During the post-war reconstruction, Corneille and his fellow Cobra artists aimed to liberate art. They sought new subjects, materials, and painting methods. Corneille painted spontaneously and improvisationally, allowing drawn lines to evolve into shapes and figures. He created an optimistic utopian world filled with joyful fantasy figures.
A trip to the Hoggar Mountains in North Africa became a new source of inspiration for him. He translated the dry, cracked landscape into increasingly abstract canvases with rounded shapes and strong lines in earthy tones. Corneille took many inspiring trips that influenced his work, but Africa remained a lasting inspiration.
By the late 1960s, the narrative aspect of Corneille’s work reemerged. Using poetic visual language, he depicted figures like women, birds, and celestial bodies in a paradisiacal, colorful world. In the 1980s and 1990s, he reached many Dutch households with screen-printing techniques through items like mugs, pens, and ties, and even a decorated hot air balloon and tram. Although the art world disapproved of this commercialization, for many, the recognizable and colorful nature of Corneille’s work served as an introduction to the art world.
The exhibition will be on view from July 3, 2022 – January 15, 2023
