Karel Appel (1921-2006) - Les Anges Noirs

This is a rare "Épreuve d'artiste" from the work "Les Anges Noirs" by Karel Appel. The work dates from 1961 and was eventually issued in an edition of 125 copies by L'OEuvre Gravée (Nesto Jacometti). This Épreuve d'artiste was purchased directly from Karel Appel by H.C. Boerma from Oostzaan in 1962. The work is still in the original list from 1962 and has since always remained family-owned. After the death it came into the possession of the current owner.

"Les Anges Noirs" (The Black Angels) is an iconic graphic work from one of the most appreciated periods of Karel Appel. It reflects the transition from his early, naïve CoBrA style to a mature, abstract expressionism.

The work is a textbook example of the physical, dynamic way in which Appel worked:
* Tension through contrast: The work lives by the clash between the massive, heavy black fields and the intense, vibrating cobalt blue.
* The iconic 'scrawls': Over the color fields you see aggressive, whirling white and gray lines. These seem almost scratched over it in pure drift, giving the work enormous primal energy and a nearly 'punk'-like aesthetics.
* Texture in the lithography: Although a litho (stone print) is a flat printing technique, Appel managed to simulate a sense of thick brushstrokes (impasto) and texture by layering the colors over each other.

Around 1961 Appel was an internationally celebrated artist who had definitively broken through in Paris and New York. He partly let go of the childhood-like, pure CoBrA figures from the 1940s and '50s to experiment with larger, looser gestures. Art historians regard these early 1960s as one of the absolute high points in his graphic oeuvre. The work is therefore included in several museum collections worldwide.

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