Karel Appel: Trending quotes

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Karel Appel: 116 quotes1 like

“[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”

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.”

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

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

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

“.. 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.”

“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”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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

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

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

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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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.”

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

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”

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

“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's excerpt', c. 1953

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

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

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