Karel Appel

Waddington and Tooth Galleries Ltd., London
Acquired directly from the above by the late owner
Thence by descent to the current owners

The present work is one of the highlights from the exceptional collection of Post War abstraction belonging to the late Peter J Cochrane. A foremost champion of an emerging generation of post-war artists, Cochrane built a personal collection that bears witness to the progressive and adventurous taste that made him one of London’s most respected and influential art dealers. He was a pioneering trendsetter and tastemaker, and throughout his long career at Arthur Tooth & Sons in Mayfair – from 1950 until its closure in the late 1970s – and was instrumental in promoting new European and American art to British audiences. A frequent visitor to Paris, he fostered strong links with Jean Dubuffet and the CoBrA painters, as well as some of the young Americans then active in the French capital. His fascinating and diverse collection is to be offered across Contemporary Art Evening and Day sales at Sotheby’s New Bond Street and Olympia in June and October 2006, and comprises masterworks by Howard Hodgkin (Lot 51 in the Evening sale), Jean Dubuffet and Asger Jorn.

Animal et fleurs was created at the pinnacle of Karel Appel’s involvement with the CoBrA movement and epitomises the vibrant expression of his best work as well as his desire to use art as a foil against the modern world. He had recently moved to Paris, essentially the centre of CoBrA activities, and the effect on his art and success was dramatically beneficial. The flattened naïve style and brut expression of the birds in the present work reflects the renewed confidence in his painting. Whilst his earlier work had tended to be a controlled state of rawness, the paintings he created in Paris show a greater release and spontaneity in the act of creation. The palette here too is much looser and the application of paint more physical. There is an element of chance to the composition in the drips and merging of colours which reveal a more direct engagement with the process of painting. Much of this was due to the influence of art brut – the work of Jean Dubuffet in particular – which enabled Appel to abandon the burden of his artistic training. “Dubuffet gave us stimulus to break away, to conquer a new expression, a new dimension, a new space,” Appel explained. (cited in: ‘Edy de Wilde in conversation with Karel Appel’, Exhibition Catalogue, Osaka, The National Museum of Art, Karel Appel, 1989, p. 12) Appel did break away, and away from his mentor also. Unlike Dubuffet whose anticultural stance was inspired by the art of primitive races and the insane, Appel’s interest was more in the art of children. Seeking to capture the fresh vision of childhood in his art, he enriched his paintings with a subjective innocence that he saw as being a necessary balm in a world so traumatised and scarred by the Second World War.