Musée d’Art Moderne
February 24 – August 20, 2017
On the occasion of an exceptional donation of the Karel Appel Foundation of 17 paintings and 4 sculptures the Musée d’Art modern de la Ville de Paris has organized a large-scale exhibition chronicling Appel’s career from CoBrA until his demise in 2006.
The exhibition borrows its title L’Art est une Fête (‘Art is a Party’) from a phrase uttered by Appel at the onset of his career:
“Our time on earth is so short that art is what allows us to make our life a party on earth.”
The museum aims to show how Karel Appel’s long career formed an emulsifier or a junction between many revolutionary artistic tendencies and inventions of the time to create one versatile yet coherent style.
A contemporary of the Compagnie de l’art brut founded by Jean Dubuffet at the same time, Appel was part of a counter-cultural movement. He rejected established values and proposed a new departure, free from convention and claiming the spontaneity of the naive.
A well-traveled artist, Karel Appel lived in several countries, including France, where he settled in 1950. His work was actively supported by critics such as Michel Ragon and Michel Tapié, who saw in it the European equivalent of the American abstract expressionism epitomized by Jackson Pollock.
Karel Appel developed a gestural signature that would make him famous all over the world. After a transitional period in the 1970s, during which he moved closer to abstraction, the artist experienced a pictorial revival in the 1980s, a period that will be highlighted by a group of large polyptychs. The exhibition will be punctuated by several sculptures, ranging from CoBrA bricolages to later ‘object-paintings’ and immense installations, whose playfulness echoes the vital energy of his painted work.
https://youtu.be/iL5y5EJHGqA
The exhibition will be on view from February 24 – August 20, 2017
