Karel Appel - Untitled (Badende) - image-1

Lot 156 D

Karel Appel - Untitled (Badende)

Auction 1162 - overview Cologne
08.12.2020, 18:00 - Evening Sale - Modern and Contemporary Art
Estimate: 200.000 € - 220.000 €

Karel Appel

Untitled (Badende)
1962

Oil on canvas. 162 x 130 cm. Framed. Signed 'appel'. - Minor traces of age.

Karel Appel's early works from the COBRA period are characterised by a seemingly aggressive artistic processing of war time experiences and the unrestrained desire to overcome traditional principles. His typical breathless and impetuous application of paint also dominated the pictorial language of the 1960s and 1970s, however, with respect to its motifs, this language often appeared calmer. The artist was stimulated by everything that happened and anything he encountered in everyday life; a fleeting impression sufficed in order for to him to create a painting in an almost instinctive process.
In this work, he captured the motif of bathers in a landscape - a classic theme that has prevailed in the history of art for centuries. Appel, who engaged himself intensively with modern art, but also with Dutch artists such as Rembrandt and Hieronymus Bosch, was certainly aware of countless artistic examples on this subject. The naked women standing in waist-high water and the low-hanging orange-red sphere of the sun are easily legible elements of the picture. The blackness spreading out next to the bathers and the red-black element rising in the foreground, on the other hand, remain puzzling and, as is usually the case with Appel, leave much room for interpretation.

Provenance

Galerie Ulysses, Vienna (label verso); private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia