Lot Essay
"The street becomes my studio and the place to recharge my batteries. I'm obsessed by the wish to combine all these objects and transform them into a new, sensual, unexpected, unusual, perhaps even extraordinary language. I have no rules, but rather a sort of radar." (Karel Appel cited in Karel Appel, New York 1985, p. 8.)
One of the earliest of Appel's sculptures, Staande figuur embodies many of the characteristics of the artist's work within one charming and eccentric figure. Assembled from chopped wooden blocks, the resultant figure is infused with a forceful yet simplistic and somewhat childlike personality that is the hallmark of Appel's finest work. Looking like a piece of folk art, Staande figuur also exhibits a totemic quality that seems to relate it to some of the finest examples of tribal art. Appel embellishes the figure with iron nails that accurately but also somewhat comically describe the figure's eyebrows and what can only be interpreted as its pubic hair. The use of these nails driven into the wood also echoes their fetishist function in much tribal sculpture.
Inspired into using the flotsam of the street for his art by the example of Kurt Schwitters, Appel welcomed the freshness and rawness of street-found materials and considered their use both appropriate and necessary in the cultural wasteland of Post-War Europe. Appel's seemingly effortless ability to infuse such detritus with readily identifiable and powerful personalities is both reminiscent of Picasso's celebrated ability to transform a bicycle seat into a bull's head and a testament to the strength of his own artistic vision.
Executed in 1947 Staande figuur pre-figures Appel's most important sculptural series The Questioning Children of 1948-9. This famous series was inspired by Appels meeting a group of hungry German children begging for food by the side of a train in the aftermath of the War. The somewhat robotic but innocent looking creature of Staande figuur bears many comparisons with the wide-eyed wooden block figures of hungry children from the important relief series of the following two years.
One of the earliest of Appel's sculptures, Staande figuur embodies many of the characteristics of the artist's work within one charming and eccentric figure. Assembled from chopped wooden blocks, the resultant figure is infused with a forceful yet simplistic and somewhat childlike personality that is the hallmark of Appel's finest work. Looking like a piece of folk art, Staande figuur also exhibits a totemic quality that seems to relate it to some of the finest examples of tribal art. Appel embellishes the figure with iron nails that accurately but also somewhat comically describe the figure's eyebrows and what can only be interpreted as its pubic hair. The use of these nails driven into the wood also echoes their fetishist function in much tribal sculpture.
Inspired into using the flotsam of the street for his art by the example of Kurt Schwitters, Appel welcomed the freshness and rawness of street-found materials and considered their use both appropriate and necessary in the cultural wasteland of Post-War Europe. Appel's seemingly effortless ability to infuse such detritus with readily identifiable and powerful personalities is both reminiscent of Picasso's celebrated ability to transform a bicycle seat into a bull's head and a testament to the strength of his own artistic vision.
Executed in 1947 Staande figuur pre-figures Appel's most important sculptural series The Questioning Children of 1948-9. This famous series was inspired by Appels meeting a group of hungry German children begging for food by the side of a train in the aftermath of the War. The somewhat robotic but innocent looking creature of Staande figuur bears many comparisons with the wide-eyed wooden block figures of hungry children from the important relief series of the following two years.