Karel Appel

Published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition and including 67 paintings, 12 sculptures and more than 60 drawings, Karel Appel: Retrospective demonstrates that Dutch artist Karel Appel (1921-2006) was much more than just a member of the avant-garde Cobra group, and more than the flamboyant personal image he cultivated. "I'm tackling two cliches," Franz Kaiser, the exhibition's curator, told The New York Times. "One is that Appel was always identified with Cobra and the other one is that Karel was 'just messing around.'" Appel had a long and varied career before and after Cobra; the artist worked steadily until his death in 2006. Taking stock of Appel's entire oeuvre, this volume explores the artist's early interest in outsider art, his wide-ranging stylistic experiments and his highly individual interpretations of traditional genres such as the nude, the portrait and the landscape.