Original Vintage 20th Century Karel Appel Framed Abstract Pencil Signed & Numbered Color Lithograph "Smiling Cat,"

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CAT LOVERS!!!
Artist: Karel Appel (Dutch, 1921 – 2006)
Title/Date: "Smiling Cat", 1978
Medium: Color lithograph on paper
Pencil Signed … Read more CAT LOVERS!!!
Artist: Karel Appel (Dutch, 1921 – 2006)
Title/Date: "Smiling Cat", 1978
Medium: Color lithograph on paper
Pencil Signed to the lower right
Pencil Numbered 61/125
Dimensions: 37.5" W x 31.5" H x 1.75" D (Frame); 29.5" W x 22" H (Sight)
Water damage to bottom of mat

A GREAT PIECE FOR CAT LOVERS!

This original Karel Appel hand signed and numbered framed abstract color double elephant folio size lithograph is an outstanding example of Appel's work. It came from a fine Cincinnati estate and depicts an abstracted smiling cat..The lithograph, from his Cat Portfolio, is number 61 from a small edition of 125. The water damage to the bottom of the mat is easily remedied with a new mat. Great color saturation and composition. Housed in a gilt frame.

Christiaan Karel Appel (pronounced [ˈkrɪstijaːn ˈkaːrəl ˈɑpəl] (listen); 25 April 1921 – 3 May 2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement CoBrA in 1948. He was also an avid sculptor and has had works featured in MoMA and other museums worldwide.

Appel, an abstract expressionist master, helped to pioneer an unrestrained physical style of painting in Europe in the period following World War II. TheCoBrA group of which Appel was a member, rejected the academic tenets of art, preferring to express a more primal aesthetic that is today associated with Abstract Expressionism. In particular, Appel's works are characterized by a restless vitality and what he called "kinetic thought' - the spontaneity of movement and creativity. Appel puts on a series of fantastic masks, reminding us of the constantly shifting borderline between the hilarious and serious. The world of play is inseparable from the world of affairs, and Appel's world of play erases the border between child and adult. His work is distinguished by thick application of paint, violent colors, and vehement brush stroke combined with a sense of childlike naiveté. Appel was awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) prize at the Venice Biennale exhibition in 1954 and in 1960 was given first prize at the Guggenheim International exhibition. In the late 1960s, he began working with three-dimensional forms, producing, first, a series of large relief sculptures in painted wood and, later, brightly colored plastic reliefs and large-scale aluminum sculptures. See less