Karel Appel

Collection Sterling Holloway, Etats-Unis
Collection particulière, Pays-Bas

San Francisco, San Francisco Art Museum; Pasadena, Pasadena Art Museum; Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum; Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Art Museum; Seattle, Seattle Art Museum; La Jolla, La Jolla Art Museum, Karel Appel, juin 1961 - février 1962; catalogue, no. 11, illustré sur la couverture

The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration although the image does not accurately convey the texture of the original work. Moreover, the colours are more orange than red and the background tends more towards cream than white. The work has been relined. The large impasto areas are slightly dusty and there are a few light cracks on the light brown impastos, on the hair of the figure that seem to have been professionally stabilized in the past. Under Ultra Violet light inspection there is no evidence of retouching. This work is in good condition.
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Couverture du catalogue d'exposition, Karel Appel, West Coast Exhibition, 1961 - 1962

De juin 1961 à février 1962 se tient dans les plus importantes institutions muséales californiennes la première exposition majeure de Karel Appel sur la côte ouest des Etats-Unis. L’exposition qui ouvre ses portes au San Francisco Art Museum est organisée en collaboration avec la galerie Martha Jackson de New York. Le présent lot, Portrait de Sterling Holloway, figure sur la couverture du catalogue de l’exposition.

Trois ans après avoir reçu le prix de l’Unesco lors de la Biennale de Venise de 1954, Karel Appel découvre les Etats-Unis où il reçoit un accueil triomphal. Durant la décennie 1960, attiré comme de nombreux autres artistes européens par la scène artistique contemporaine, Karel Appel vivra et travaillera régulièrement à New York. Et ce n’est pas simplement le succès du mouvement expressionniste abstrait qui attire le cofondateur du groupe CoBrA, mais aussi les intervenants de la scène artistique dans son ensemble : les poètes, les écrivains, les musiciens de jazz…  Ainsi Karel Appel portraiture-t-il le trompettiste Dizzy Gillepsie dont la musique servira de bande-son au film dirigé par Jan Vrijman en 1961, The Reality of Karel Appel.

C’est dans ce contexte d’une scène artistique en ébullition qu’il fait la rencontre de Sterling Holloway, acteur américain proche de Walt Disney, qui deviendra le plus important doubleur de voix des Studio Disney. Dans le Portrait de Sterling Holloway, on retrouve tout à la fois la fougue et la puissance de la touche de Karel Appel et l’originalité  des couleurs de sa palette.

From June 1961 to February 1962, an important exhibition of Karel Appel‘s works took place in a major Californian museum. The show opened at the San Francisco Art Museum and was organized in collaboration with the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. The present work, Portrait of Sterling Holloway, figures on the exhibition catalogue cover.

Three years after obtaining the Unesco prize at the Venice Biennale in 1954, Karel Appel discovered the United States where he received a triumphal welcome. During the 1960s and like many other European artists, he was interested in the contemporary art scene, living and working regularly in New York. It was not simply the success of the Abstract Expressionist movement that attracted the co-founder of the CoBrA group, but also all contributors to the artistic scene in its entirety: the poets, the writers, the jazz musicians. Karel Appel thus painted the portrait of the trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie whose music was used for the soundtrack of the film The Reality of Karel Appel directed by Jan Vrijman in 1961.

It was in the context of this animated art scene that he met Sterling Holloway, an American actor close to Walt Disney, who was to become one of the most important voice actors of the Disney Studios.  In the Portrait of Sterling Holloway, the power and fervor of Karel Appel’s brushstrokes are in full display, as well as the original colours of his palette.