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Karel Appel defines his painting

24 octobre 1968
03m 22s
Ref. 00055

Information

Summary :

Interview with Karel Appel, one of the founders of the artistic movement CoBrA, which defined his painting. He speaks about imagination, subjects, the large format of his works.

Media type :
Vidéo
Broadcast date :
24 octobre 1968
Source :
ORTF (Collection: L'Amour De L'Art )
Personnalité(s) :
Karel Appel
Themes :
Places :

Context

From the beginning, the work of Karel Appel (1921, Amsterdam - 2006, Zurich) was motivated by the refusal of convention and the rejection of a materialist society. A student of the Amsterdam Academy of Fine-arts during the Second World War, he was influenced by Picasso, Dubuffet and Matisse. In 1948, with Corneille and Constant, he opposed the dominant geometric abstraction in the Netherlands, in the wake of Mondrian neoplasticism.

One year later they participated in the foundation of the collective CoBrA for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam from the name of the towns where the members are from. Amongst them, Dotremont, Alechinsky, Jorn and Bury. The movement, close to communist ideals, refers to popular Nordic art, primitive art, children's drawings and surrealist automatism. This would be for Appel the era of anthropomorphic creations and a series of tri-dimensional paintings. Following protests sparked by his fresque that was to decorate the Amsterdam Town Hall and finally covered over for ten years, the artist began to travel. In Paris he developed an impulsive painting that was close to the American action painting.

His painting never ceased to express the violent feelings that the world inspired in him. Amongst other symbolic actions, of which the use of junk items in his works in the Arte Povera manner, Karel Appel collaborated on mural paintings with the inhabitants of shantytowns in Lima in 1976.

Cécile Olive

Transcription

Adam Saulnier
Karel Appel, of Dutch nationality, French by adoption, profession: painter, no relationship to traditional painting still less to easel painting. If you had to define your painting, how would you define it?
Karel Appel
Oh you know, I'm always difficult because people always talk about painting, because basically painting does not talk.
Reporter
Imaginary, an imaginary way if you like.
Adam Saulnier
What does imagination mean for you?
Karel Appel
To keep it short and simple, because otherwise it always takes too long to explain, you take the subject, that is for example the wood, and the colour, the paint. You compose the subject, the realistic subject, you make a fantastic shape. For example, here, this is some wood, this is a table with a top and wooden flowers, you know, therefore I paint a [flowery] table, for example.
Adam Saulnier
Did you decide to do a table with an unusual shape, with a head whose ears will stick out from the table, and flowers instead of a nose? Did you decide to do that or did things just happen like that, little by little, as you went along?
Karel Appel
Yes, little be little, during the work, because I changed that three times for example, the head I changed three times, because there is still a top underneath. Afterwards I found no...
Adam Saulnier
Would you say that for you the imagination is a progressive phenomenon?
Karel Appel
Yes, yes, yes, progressive during the work, during the work on the subject.
Adam Saulnier
The national centre for contemporary art is presenting around 25 large compositions by Karel Appel These are reliefs, reliefs in carved wood and paint or even in polyester paint, all in large sizes. Karel Appel, that requires a very large workshop!
Karel Appel
Yes, because I live in Paris, but just outside Paris at the start of Yonne, I have a barn, a very, very big barn.
Adam Saulnier
In Yonne?
Karel Appel
Yes, in Yonne, just at the start of Yonne, right near Auxerre, a barn forty metres long, six metres wide and fifteen metres high, and I do all my work there...
Adam Saulnier
It's like a street then?
Karel Appel
Yes, it's like a large street, you know.
Adam Saulnier
Many artists of your generation have the same need for very large sizes. It's never large enough, some have said to me, at 20, 30, 40 metres, there is no longer any limit.
Karel Appel
Yes, yes.
Adam Saulnier
How? How do you explain this need for more and more gigantic sizes?
Karel Appel
Because I believe, they always say to me that I'm an expressionist, I don't know why, because perhaps the technique is [not understood] and the colour is strong.. But for some years, I work, I feel much more of, of the space, that is: magic is spacious if you like. Because for me man is an infinitely creative space. And because of that I am always looking to expand my work, you know, to find space.