Karel Appel

“c. 130 pictures of the art of Karel Appel, on Artsy”

“images of painting art of Karel Appel, on Wikiart”

“Karel Appel Foundation”

“YouTube (Video of the Cobra Artist)”

“'Karel Appel, Le cheval mourant, 1956', text by Valeriano Bozal – in B’09: Bulletin. Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, no. 5, 2010”

“'The Song of the Inner Voice' - about Karel Appel's Serial Versatility, by Frank van der Ploeg; with quotes of Karel Appel”

“interview with Karel Appel, by Adam Saulnier, broadcast date 24 October, 1968 (French spoken, undertitled in English)”

“But Appel is more an assembler than a sculptor. Although now and then he carves wood or models plaster his works are mainly assemblages. He recycles objets trouvés which appeal to him in some way or which invite reuse. An increasingly wide range of industrial leftovers is incorporated in the assemblages from the early Nineties.”

“It is painting and sculpture [of Karel Appel] at its best. It is close to the heart, animalistic, idealistic, and thoroughly experimental.”

“The body trained to deal with worries and with itself falls apart. A contradictory body rises from it, a will to see shows itself what can only be seen at night. Who sees then? Through the sacrificed body Black sees itself red, it listens to its vibrating tones, which the day never hears. The magnetic hand and shoulder hastily throws illuminations on the canvas. At this instant of gesture, the unknown storms, and the body breaks apart.”

“The painter is the first dancer of his work. Appel understands the appeal to disturb the finished work as he is in the process of making it. He drops his canvas, his paper, puts down his brush – that is to say, he resigns himself to the deposition of the gesture, as one gives in to fatigue by taking a break. He will soon begin performing again..”

“..Appel does not hesitate to expose his colour to rubbish. More than any other this work returns 'aesthetic discourse to its precariousness: how could it articulate coloured things that so clearly result from a 'gesture' and are free from any finality. It is not the gesture of the painter, it is the gesture of painting, or painting as gesture that Appel opposes to thought.”

“Occasion is a good word: it speaks of an 'offered case'. The painter also lives on such plundering. Karel Appel is touched by a circumstance, and make paintings out of his feeling. Appel's work touches in turn those that encounter it, and they leap at the occasion to reflect on it. Art and thinking live on these, jostling.”

“Now you know what red does: / Red likes to walk in the green grass. / You now know what yellow knows: / The sun shines because no one's fond on dying. / As for blue: the blue sky seems black / to the kid who welcomes nothing.”

“[Appel] is a classical painter who lives much less in the 'madding' crowd and far more in the quiet of his studios.”

“[Appel] has to shatter, to infringe. It is his deployment. He is a solitary man with a staggering health. He leaves dreaming to matter.”

“Violence allows Appel to lose 'nothing' of the 'whole'; to stop his painting only after all the leaps of the act have crossed it.”

“[Appel's paintings] assert themselves with a certain brutality that leaves little room for doubt.. .Appel exists.. .Appel's paintings exist, they are made of colour-paste. His painting is absolutely materialist.”

“[Karel Appel called out to 'his Night':] You, Beauty! And since I have to account for a body, I have handed this torture over to the executioner”

“The only control that I excercize [in painting] is to not throw too much paint next to the canvas.”