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“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)

Boy , Parent , Light , Time

“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)

Life , Fear , Fight , Painting

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

Karel Appel

Quotes

“.. 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)

Life , Time , Painting

“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

Life , Time , Waiting , Painting

“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

Life , Painting , Night

“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)

Color , Painting

“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)

Appearance

“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

Art , Childhood

“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

Music , Mountain

“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

Painting

“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)

Color , Feeling , Happiness

“Willem de Kooning, they say, lost his memory. He lost his worldly memory. He lost the names of the people, he lost their faces... This is one of the reasons he paints as a real painter.”

Karel Appel
People , Memory , Painting