Devil Cat (1978) by Karel Appel

This is one of a limited edition of 125 pieces worldwide. It is held in the collections of several University Museums in the United States and Europe. Recent auction prices of pieces from the CATS SUITE have sold at auction in the range of $1,400 to $2,950.

PORTFOLIO/SERIES: from the portfolio "Cats"

ARTIST: Karel Appel, Dutch, 1921 - 2006

MEDIUM: Lithograph on paper

Tiny rub in the paper as shown.

DATES: 1978

DIMENSIONS Sheet: 24 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. (62.9 x 81.9 cm) Image: 22 1/4 x 30 in. (56.5 x 76.2 cm)  (show scale)

SIGNATURE: Signed lower right in graphite: "Appel"

Artist Bio:

Karel Appel (1921 – 2006)  Dutch

Born under the sign of Taurus in the port area of Amsterdam, Appel had a strict traditional education followed by a two year apprenticeship in his father’s hairdressing salon. As a youngster, his uncle, an amateur painter, encouraged him to copy the works of the Impressionists and before he was eighteen he saw his vocation in the arts.

At eighteen he left his family home and was accepted at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris.  During the war, when the Netherlands had been overwhelmed by the Nazis, he avoided deportation to Germany by residing in the countyside where he exchanged paintings for food or cigarettes or performed as a singer in cafes. Appel liked to stress that he had been impregnated with Jewish culture which provided him with his warm and irreverent sense of humor and his ear for music, particularly jazz.

In the mid 1940’s, he experimented with the many schools of the period such as expressionism, surrealism, constructivism and abstraction only to reject the world of adult representation for the more primitive world of spontaneity and color. “Appel makes the child within us, who may have left us but is still our accomplice, play; he lets it play and catches it in the act of playing.”  The style distinguishes itself through bold, forceful and expressive compositions inspired by folk and children’s art.

In 1948 Appel, along with several other artists of the era, founded the COBRA School of Art (Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam). His first one-man show was in 1949 when he exhibited with the COBRA Group at Amsterdam’s Stedlijk Museum.  Appel broadened his art to include sculpture, murals, collaborations with poets, musicians and other artists including poet Allen Ginsberg and  jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie.  (you can watch You Tube videos showing Appel at work in his studio). In his later years his work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and awards and is contained in the collections of leading art museums around the world

Appel died in 2006 from a heart ailment in Zurich, Switzerland where he then resided. Years before his death Appel established the Karel Appel Foundation in Amsterdam to promote public awareness and knowledge of his works.