Corneille (1922-2010) - Cirque

Corneille was born in the Belgian city of Liège, the child of Dutch parents. Although largely self-taught, he took art courses at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie, between 1940 and 1942. In 1946 he held his first exhibition in Groningen.

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

In 1950 he moved from Amsterdam to Paris, where he lived with photographer Henny Riemens (1928–1993) until 1968. The couple married in 1955 in Amsterdam and travelled several times to other parts of the world: North Africa, North America, the Antilles and South America. These journeys largely shaped the nature of his work. From 1960 he returned to figurative art, with women, birds, flowers and often characters forming part of his artistic vocabulary.