Karel Appel
Object Paintings

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of sculptures by Karel Appel at Goethestraße 2/3, in Berlin. In important literature on the artist, Karel Appel (1921-2006), who would have celebrated his centennial this year, is consistently referred to as a painter and founding member of CoBrA. The fact that the avant-garde group lasted only three years, and that this period thus actually grasps a relatively brief episode at the beginning of Appel’s long career, is usually overlooked. Likewise, few are aware that Appel expressed himself not only in a painterly manner, but also in three dimensions. It is true that he was first and foremost a painter, and his forays into objecthood are mostly based on a painterly rather than sculptural approach, but this is precisely where their particular appeal lies: they apply painterly thinking onto the object, and for this reason Appel’s sculptures are known as ‘Object Paintings‘.