Karel Appel Quotes (58 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Karel Appel: 58 quotes1 like

Famous Karel Appel Quotes

“There exists an insanity that touches on a higher level, by knowledge or instinct. That insanity of life I try to put in my painting. It has nothing to do with any morals or laws. It is there and it is insane.”

Karel Appel

in 'The eye of the beholder', Carlo McCormick
Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“The Cobra group started new, and first of all we threw away all these things we had known and started afresh, like a child — fresh and new. Sometimes my works look very childish, or childlike, schizophrenic or stupid, you know. But that was the good thing for me. Because, for me, the material is the paint itself. The paint expresses itself. In the mass of paint, I find my imagination and go on to paint it.”

Karel Appel

Quoted in: 'Karel Appel, Dutch Expressionist Painter, Dies at 85', by Margalit Fox, in 'Art & Design', New York Times May 9, 2006
Quote of an oral history in 'Contemporary Artists' - Karel Appel describes the wild artistic urgency that gave rise to the Cobra artist-group

“.. people always talk about painting, because basically painting does not talk.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel defines his painting', interview 1968

“That is what he used to do, what he is doing now for the last hears. He is the only painter who paints like that.... like the wind, like the ocean, like the light, like the sunlight, like the moonlight, far away from everything, without any image..”

Karel Appel

quotes from Appel's poem '..and now I want to talk about Willem de Kooning, February 1990 http://beeldgedicht.info/Reprocitaat/appel-kooning.htm

“All the absurdity and hope are the stimulants to create. You make art to find a little hole to go on. You go through the whole to find the world again, and the absurdity is that still, somehow it is the same... Hopelessness and hope are the same. It's a very thin line you don't see any more. I don't believe in that line between hopelessness and hope today.”

Karel Appel

in 'The eye of the beholder', Carlo McCormick
Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“Of course, I painted before Cobra, as afterwards. Each one of us [CoBrA-artists] had his own personality. Cobra is only a very short period of my life. It was like a crossroads. We crossed paths and each continued on his way.... We [artists] are not born to form groups. A group that lasted for too long would destroy the creative activity of its members.”

Karel Appel

Quote of Appel in an interview with fr:Michel Ragon, 1963; as quoted in; Karel Appel, a gesture of colour, Jean-François Lyotard, (original French text of 1992 based upon intensive correspondence with Karel Appel), Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Herman Parret; University Press, Leuven, Belgium, 2009, p. 105
fr:Michel Ragon asked Appel: 'Without Cobra, would you have been what you are today?'

Karel Appel Quotes about painting

“The only control that I excercize [in painting] is to not throw too much paint next to the canvas.”

Karel Appel

MR1, 177; p. 215
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“I have painted like an ape. The ape phase is in all my work. My first lick of paint is the ape phase, from that I grow towards a more intellectual phase, involving the lines, the rhythm. From that phase I grow towards mankind, for that is where the power of my imagination lies. It no longer has anything to do with reality, even though the world is present in it - for we recognize people, animals, plants, you name it.”

Karel Appel

quote of Karel Appel: from the conversation with Rudy Fuchs in 1990; as quoted in 'The Low Countries', Jaargang 12(2004) on DBNL (Dutch Librairy online) http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001200401_01/_low001200401_01_0027.php

“My paint is like a rocket, which describes its own space. I try to make the impossible possible. What is happening I cannot foresee, it is a surprise. Painting, like passion, is an emotion full of truth and rings a living sound, like the roar coming from the lion's breast.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

“One of my first sculptures was made of bicycle parts. I was living at that time in a attic in the red light section of Amsterdam. I started to work without any specific materials. I was looking in the street like when I was a young boy, in the garbage cans, for ropes, wires, and paint. I left my parents in 1940. Years later I saw an exhibition of Kurt Schwitters at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam curated by Willem Sandberg and there I saw the real 'objet trouvé'; until then I had never heard about it. Schwitters was a shattering experience.”

Karel Appel

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 79 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

“.. at least fifty [gouaches painted in complete dark], one after another. Then I made a light, a candle, and I picked them up and turned them around, as I couldn't see a top or a bottom. I finished them off as I felt fit, a bit more white or a red spot [in his studio in Amsterdam, in 1947”

Karel Appel

Quote from a talk in 1990 with Rudi Fuchs; in 'Appel, about growing older'; as quoted by Frank van der Ploeg, in 'The Low Countries'. Jaargang 12(2004) http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001200401_01/_low001200401_01_0027.php

“My work is in a complete transformation. Lately, in my studio in Amsterdam, 'beings' re-emerge more and more, but I have repainted all the canvases that I have brought with me [from Amsterdam to Paris]. It is matter itself. On the canvas, no discovery, no personal drama, no submission to a rhythm.... freed from 'Victory Boogiewoogie' [title of the last work of Piet Mondrian, 1944], bepop, bepop, we free ourselves from rhythm, we are not there yet, but it is coming... Now I paint stains, bigger stains, colours endlessly reapplied one upon the other, I scrape and I put down new stains of colour unto nothing remains but one great plane, concentrated and linked at the same time, suddenly a vivid red or yellow and the canvas and being merge.”

Karel Appel

Quote in a letter of Karel Appel from Paris to Aldo van Eyck, October 1950; as quoted in (MR1-85); Karel Appel, a gesture of colour, Jean-François Lyotard, (original French text of 1992 based upon intensive correspondence with Karel Appel), Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Herman Parret; University Press, Leuven, Belgium, 2009, p. 99

Karel Appel Quotes about life

“The duty of the artist is not to be calculating in any sense, so that he may be free himself of human emotions while carried by the universal forces of life. Only then does one not think about making art, or about styles, or directions. Something comes about, something happens.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“Every day I have to be awake to escape... The whole world is sleepy. It is a real fight to be awake, to see everything new, for the first time in your life.”

Karel Appel

Quote from 'The eye of the beholder', Carlo McCormick
Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“.. And his painting is like the wind, like a breeze blowing the paint across the canvas, so unreal, so loose and far away from the worldly life.”

Karel Appel

“The wastelands belong to my youth [c. 1930's]. When I was young I played in the outskirts of the city - watching the cranes at the harbour. There was no law but garbage, grass and wildflowers like boys and girls, rough, hot and sexual and full of hidden pleasures. Life and death are overlapping in the wastelands like in my paintings.”

Karel Appel

Appel's quote is referring to his youth in Amsterdam, in the outskirts and the ports of the Dutch city
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

“To paint is to destroy what preceded. I never try to make a painting, but a chunk of life. It is a scream; it is a night; it is like a child; it is a tiger behind bars.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

“It's like this - you are in front of your canvas, you hand holds the paint, ready, raised. The canvas waits, waits, empty and white - but all the time it knows what it wants. So - what does it want, anyway? My hand comes near, my eyes begin to transform the waiting canvas; and when - with my hands holding the paint and my eyes seeing the forms - I touch the canvas, it trembles, it comes to life.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

Karel Appel: Trending quotes

“Pollock... I also feel
like an erupting volcano.”

Karel Appel

ATV, 187; p. 167
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“It is a question of expressing, at base,
the essence of the tree... What does not appear
in what does appear, in short.
What remains hidden, concealed,
withdraws into what appears.”

Karel Appel

ATV 13; p. 121
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“[artists are people] who employ matter between birth and death. Matter is something to use, not possess.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Karel Appel Quotes

“When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, The 'Leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself.”

Karel Appel

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 93 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
Appel's quote is referring to his sculpture 'Monument for Walt Whitman', dedicated to the American poet

“Theories
Are the things and neither idealism
nor religions, nor histories
nor slogans.
The complexity of things themselves, that's what
theories are... The thing exists without showing itself,
entirely, it
does nor appear, theory is the
thing.”

Karel Appel

CF 63; p. 111
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“I'm able to paint so nice and thick with those big splodges that stay upright because I mix my own paint. I use the formula that the seventeenth-century painters used and I've added one or two things myself. A very important element is stand oil. I once got hold of a whole barrel full and I'm still using it. There are pots of it in all my studios, in New York, in Connecticut, in Monaco, and in Tuscany. [the oil had been found when an old paint shop closed down, in a] stock that had been there since the seventeenth century... I mix my oil paint with it, and I throw in a lot of eggs and some concentrated turpentine. It's as thick as homemade mayonnaise. When it dries it is as tough and hard as rubber.”

Karel Appel

Quote from an interview in 'Elsevier', 22 December, 1990; translated and quoted by Frank van der Ploeg, in 'The Low Countries'. Jaargang 12 (2004) http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001200401_01/_low001200401_01_0027.php

“In poetic creation there is no
question of overcoming matter, as the
idle aesthetic proclaimed
by so many people would have it – but to free matter.”

Karel Appel

ATV 187; p. 151
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“To keep it short and simple.... you take the subject, that is for example the wood, and the colour, the paint. You compose the subject, the realistic subject, you make a fantastic shape. For example, here, this is some wood, this is a table with a top and wooden flowers, you know, therefore I paint a [flowery] table, for example..”

Karel Appel

explaining his way of imagination
Karel Appel defines his painting', interview 1968

“When you get older as a painter and you've got the opportunities, the talent and the good fortune and have been provided with everything for getting old, then it's fantastic, because the same brushstroke that you put down is more mature and more poignant than it was when you were young.”

Karel Appel

Quote from a 1995 interview with Rudi Fuchs; in 'Appel, about growing older'; as quoted by Frank van der Ploeg, in 'The Low Countries'. Jaargang 12(2004) http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001200401_01/_low001200401_01_0027.php

“Knowledge isolates phenomena and things to observe with.... nothing is isolatable or can be removed from its environment. Anything which becomes isolated ceases to exist. It is like the violent refusal of someone to play a game in which everyone cheats.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“I am afraid of a new barbarism which is killing
man's freedom.”

Karel Appel

ATV 179; p. 151
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“[Karel Appel called out to 'his Night':] You, Beauty! And since I have to account for a body, I have handed this torture over to the executioner”

Karel Appel

CF,28; p. 219
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“Something appears midway between order and chaos, these forms, these expressions occupy a middle position.”

Karel Appel

1973 - from CF,35; p. 67
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“Theories / are things... Absence and nonexistence / of theories are things.”

Karel Appel

quote 1983 - from CF, 63; p. 55
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“If I had not become a painter,
I would surely have become a clown..
.. because I make people laugh..
.. Faces deformed
by suffering, humour or work.
Often crazy. They then became imaginary,
when I adorned them with movements
free colours depending on the head. The
colour too become clown-like”

Karel Appel

AF, 73; p. 161
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“The true artist has no style. Style is an exterior decorative element. The true artist as servant of his matter, transcends it with an absolute freedom.”

Karel Appel

quote, 1984 - from ATV', 188; p. 49
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“You can see the roughness of structure and the spots like wounds from battles on the canvas. The tops of skyscrapers with windows like eyes constantly remind you that there are laws surrounding the wastelands, and so you hide in the deep grass when you make love to a girl in dirty clothes, and experience how your nerves of seeing become stronger and stronger and every little sound more and more intense. That's what Pasolini's poetry is partly about; he was a street guy and therefore I avoided beautiful new wood or metal for his sculpture... The wasteland was Pasolini's other side; the boys, the knives, the nights, the tensions.”

Karel Appel

Appel is referring to the Italian movie-maker Pasolini
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

“As an artist you have to fight and survive the wilderness to keep your creative freedom. Creativity is very fragile. It's like a leaf in the fall; it hangs and when it drops you don't know where it's drifting.”

Karel Appel

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 91 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

“A war is raging within me that burns everything. So I can begin again.”

Karel Appel

quote 1982 - from CF, 48; p. 83
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“I paint like a barbarian in this barbarous time.”

Karel Appel

“If the stroke of the brush is so important, it is because it expresses precisely what is not there.”

Karel Appel

quote 1985 - from CF, 44; p. 69
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“.. I believe, they always say to me that I'm an expressionist, I don't know why, because perhaps the technique is [not understood] and the colour is strong... But for some years, I work, I feel much more of, of the space, that is: magic is spacious if you like. Because for me man is an infinitely creative space. And because of that I am always looking to expand my work, you know, to find space.”

Karel Appel

explaining his need for large sizes
Karel Appel defines his painting', interview 1968

“('My three year old daughter can do as much'.) Yes, it is true, but the difference is that I do it.”

Karel Appel

MR1, 51; p. 197
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“The mill is a tool for the wind
the mill is like a human being
that escapes”

Karel Appel

ATV, 47; p. 183
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“The struggle begins, to harmonize canvas, eye, hand, forms. New apparitions stalk the earth.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

“As I said, in the Fifties I had the 'angst' (= Dutch for 'fear') to survive materialistically. In the city Paris it was a battle. I painted with a knife and called the results 'human landscapes', abstract landscapes with human faces here and there. Today I can do without fight or struggle; every brushstroke now is ready, goes by itself: la peinture depouillé you could say. I discovered that in Picasso's late paintings. You look very closely but there is nothing anymore. He painted here and there a little bit; it is not finished, but once you step back you see a fantastic image, life by itself. I'm not fighting anymore; I'm floating, surfing on the wind.”

Karel Appel

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 95 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

“He is like an angel who floats for a little while on this planet and touches with his wings the canvas.”

Karel Appel

“quote, c. 1960; from the documentary De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel, by Dutch filmer Jan Vrijman, 1962”

Karel Appel

“.. because I live in Paris, but just outside Paris at the start of Yonne, I have a barn, a very, very big barn.... right near Auxerre, a barn forty meters long, six meters wide and fifteen meters high, and I do all my work there.. it's like a large street, you know.”

Karel Appel

describing the location outside Paris, where he makes his large relief compositions
Karel Appel defines his painting', interview 1968

“Our civilization is in a continuous state of self-repair. Maybe you have undergone surgery once. In former times you might have died. Today everybody can live on and on; everything around us is repaired, even the spirit. Look at the young artists. They only paint the facade and not the things hidden behind it. I don't say that life is lost its originality. I show straightforwardly the state of repair of civilization.”

Karel Appel

Appel is referring to his sculpture 'State of liberty'
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

“The brushstroke, in painting, is purely and
simply what it is – rhythm,
color, matter.”

Karel Appel

ATV, 187; p. 175
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“At the very moment when my ego is unprooted [uprooted? ] and freed of intellectual activities and values, the realization of what is still unknown and uncreated, the silent 'non-form' unity emerges, appearing as childish schizophrenia. The indefinable beginning takes form”

Karel Appel

1969 - from CF,32; p. 45
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“The experience of the moment is what's important, and somehow the image, the 'thing' is left over.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“Through play, we renew contact with childhood - My art is childlike.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“Now we'll start the song of the wild man who lives on the mountain top, who does not want to be seen
let us now start that song without words, without music, come on..
(let's not do anything for at least ten minutes)
That's the spirit, there he comes, the song of the inner voice, the song of the primitive man”

Karel Appel

a poem of Karel Appel, 1981; from Karel Appel. The Colourful Stranger. Poems and Drawings (Karel Appel. De kleurige onbekende. Gedichten en tekeningen), Amsterdam, 1986

“I don't paint, I hit.”

Karel Appel

quote circa 1958; from the movie 'De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel', Jan Vrijman; as quoted in De Tweede Helft, Ad de Visser, SUN Nijmegen, 1998

“a sky of clouds completely 'out of the blue'… I'm looking, reflecting, and when it suddenly happens: hey, the clouds, and what clouds!”

Karel Appel

in interview with nl:Ischa Meyer, c. 1988
quote c. 1988 - from ('RM'), 157; p. 41
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“My brush-strokes start in nothing and they end in nothing, and in-between you find the image.”

Karel Appel

Quote from 'The eye of the beholder', Carlo McCormick
Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

“I'm not a pessimist. Maybe I don't have a primitive feeling of happiness, that is true. Sometimes my color is happy but not the expression.”

Karel Appel

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)