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拍品專文
Deux enfants et un oiseau ('Two Children and a Bird') was painted in 1952, a watershed year in the work of Karel Appel. By this time the turbulent yet meteoric career of the CoBrA group had come to an end. Appel had been living in Paris since 1950 where, under the aegis of writer and art critic Michel Tapié, his art truly came into its own. The visual idiom he had created, a pictorial language of anxious joy and celebration, was consolidated as was, more importantly, his technique. Tapié exhibited works by Appel in 1952, giving him an unprecedented favourable publicity. However, perhaps his greatest influence was in sponsoring Appel's use of superior materials in the execution of his works. This opened up new realms of possibility in his paintings.
Deux enfants et un oiseau retains the rawness that had characterised Appel's earlier art. 'Street art' was important to Appel, who had earlier led a hand-to-mouth existence and also worked as an itinerant artist merely in order to survive. The rubble of his nation, as well as his life on the street, encouraged him to sometimes utilise scraps and debris in his art. In Paris, this 'street art', tempered by his interest in German Expressionsm, evolved into a new, raw visual style, as exuberant and emotional as the artist himself. Haunted by the carcass of his war-torn country, Appel portrayed happiness in a simple, universal style. The innocence of the scene in this work is beguiling, with the children happy and innocent despite the earthy tones used to paint them. Likewise the bird, although it is the same size as one of the children, is neither threatening nor threatened. The children are at one with the bird, at one with nature.
In Deux enfants et un oiseau, Appel shows how clearly reveled in his new materials and new subject matter with his palette showing the increasing influence of the French-led Informel art current at the time. Some of the colours strike a discord with the jolly image they are being used to depict, as does the violence of the application of the paint, as Appel honed his new form of post-War expressionism. Deux enfants et un oiseau appears to be the product of frenzy and rage, and yet retains its outward innocence. This strange paradox, the exorcism of the miseries of post-War Europe and idyllic memories of its pre-War state, mingles anxiety with joy, the ultimate reflection of the age. Appel himself explained this phenomenon shortly before painting Deux enfants et un oiseau saying, 'Painting is a tangible, sensual experiencing, intensely moved by joy and the tragedy of man. A spatial experiencing, fed by instinct, becomes a living shape. The atmosphere I inhale and make tangible by my paint is an expression of my era' (Appel, 1950, quoted in Karel Appel, ed. A. Frankenstein, New York, 1979, p.49).
Deux enfants et un oiseau retains the rawness that had characterised Appel's earlier art. 'Street art' was important to Appel, who had earlier led a hand-to-mouth existence and also worked as an itinerant artist merely in order to survive. The rubble of his nation, as well as his life on the street, encouraged him to sometimes utilise scraps and debris in his art. In Paris, this 'street art', tempered by his interest in German Expressionsm, evolved into a new, raw visual style, as exuberant and emotional as the artist himself. Haunted by the carcass of his war-torn country, Appel portrayed happiness in a simple, universal style. The innocence of the scene in this work is beguiling, with the children happy and innocent despite the earthy tones used to paint them. Likewise the bird, although it is the same size as one of the children, is neither threatening nor threatened. The children are at one with the bird, at one with nature.
In Deux enfants et un oiseau, Appel shows how clearly reveled in his new materials and new subject matter with his palette showing the increasing influence of the French-led Informel art current at the time. Some of the colours strike a discord with the jolly image they are being used to depict, as does the violence of the application of the paint, as Appel honed his new form of post-War expressionism. Deux enfants et un oiseau appears to be the product of frenzy and rage, and yet retains its outward innocence. This strange paradox, the exorcism of the miseries of post-War Europe and idyllic memories of its pre-War state, mingles anxiety with joy, the ultimate reflection of the age. Appel himself explained this phenomenon shortly before painting Deux enfants et un oiseau saying, 'Painting is a tangible, sensual experiencing, intensely moved by joy and the tragedy of man. A spatial experiencing, fed by instinct, becomes a living shape. The atmosphere I inhale and make tangible by my paint is an expression of my era' (Appel, 1950, quoted in Karel Appel, ed. A. Frankenstein, New York, 1979, p.49).