1956, Karel Appel, Harlequin Nude -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: In 1948, Appel was among the group of emerging European artists who formed the avant-garde movement CoBrA, a reference to the capital cities of its founding members: Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam. Horror-struck at the atrocities perpetrated by the West during World War II and the rise of the Cold War in its aftermath, the group began to challenge measured and cerebral approaches to art through frenzied and spontaneous methods of creative expression. Central to their approach was the use of what they considered “primitive” or unbridled mark making. While influenced by artists such as Picasso and Dubuffet, Appel’s work was based wholly on emotion, intuition, and immediacy. In Harlequin Nude, the thick impasto and frenetic energy of the figure’s outline, created from clumps of black paint applied directly from the tube, suggest a frantic unleashing of primal energy.
1956, Karel Appel, Harlequin Nude -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: In 1948, Appel was among the group of emerging European artists who formed the avant-garde movement CoBrA, a reference to the capital cities of its founding members: Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam. Horror-struck at the atrocities perpetrated by the West during World War II and the rise of the Cold War in its aftermath, the group began to challenge measured and cerebral approaches to art through frenzied and spontaneous methods of creative expression. Central to their approach was the use of what they considered “primitive” or unbridled mark making. While influenced by artists such as Picasso and Dubuffet, Appel’s work was based wholly on emotion, intuition, and immediacy. In Harlequin Nude, the thick impasto and frenetic energy of the figure’s outline, created from clumps of black paint applied directly from the tube, suggest a frantic unleashing of primal energy.