Lithograph

Vibrant abstract lithograph of a cat by artist Karel Appel in 1969. Edition of 100. Signed and dated by artist in lower right corner. Marked E.A., or "épreuve d’artiste", which is the French indication of an artist's proof.

Karel Appel was born in 1921 in Amsterdam, Netherlands and passed away in 2006 in Zurich, Switzerland at the age of 85. Appel attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Amsterdam (1940–43), and helped found the “Reflex” group, which became known as COBRA (for Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam), in 1948. He moved to Paris in 1950 and by the 1960s had settled in New York City; he later lived in Italy and Switzerland. Partly in reaction against what they perceived as the sterile academicism of the de Stijl movement, the COBRA artists assimilated a variety of more-impulsive influences, including folk art, children’s art, and l’art brut (“raw art”) of Jean Dubuffet. They exploited the spontaneity and intensity of the contemporary American Action painting while maintaining a degree of representation. Appel’s style is characterized by thick layering of pigment, violent brushwork, and a crude, reductive figuration.

H 35 In. X W 45.75 In. X D 1.25 In.

H 25 in. x W 35.5 in.