Corneille (1922-2010) - Cirque

Corneille was born in the Belgian city of Liège, the son of Dutch parents[3]. Although largely self-taught, he attended art courses at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie, between 1940 and 1942. In 1946 he held his first exhibition in Groningen.

Initially heavily influenced by the work of Picasso, he disengaged from it in 1948 and joined the Cobra movement; he is one of its co-founders, together with, among others, the Dutch Karel Appel, Jan Nieuwenhuijs, his brother Constant Nieuwenhuijs, and the Belgians Christian Dotremont and Joseph Noiret.

In 1950 he moved from Amsterdam to Paris where he lived with the photographer Henny Riemens[4] (1928-1993) until 1968. The couple married in 1955 in Amsterdam and traveled several times to other parts of the world: North Africa, North America, the Antilles and South America. These travels largely determine the nature of his work. From 1960 he returned to figurative art, in which women, birds, flowers, and often characters belong to his artistic vocabulary.