This retrospective catalogue of 67 paintings, 12 sculptures and more than 60 drawings demonstrates that Karel Appel was more than just a member of the Cobra movement and more than his flamboyant personal image.

The survey revisits, for example, Appel’s early interest in Outsider Art, his wide ranging stylistic experiments, and his highly individual – sometimes almost abstract – interpretation of traditional genres like the nude, the portrait and the urban or rural landscape.

The exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum, is a pivotal part of a wider international reappraisal of  Karel Appel’s work, which is also to include exhibitions in Paris, London and Washington. He is, arguably, the most famous Dutch artist of second half of twentieth century.

In addition to essays by Rudi Fuchs, Klaus Ottmann and Dr Franz-W. Kaiser, this catalogue contains an interview with art critic Michel Ragon, one of the last remaining first-hand witnesses of Appel’s Cobra period in Paris.

Thanks to new research, this publication also includes both a detailed chronology and a completely updated version of Karel Appel’s renowned counter-cultural manifesto.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, 3 December 2015 – 16 May 2016.

English and Dutch text.