Works of Art: Corneille

Octavio Paz I, II, II (Noir), 1964

Lithograph, 4/11

Triptych

$ 1,400 / SOLD

Works of art by Corneille are available at if ART Gallery, 1223 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC.

Contact Wim Roefs at if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com or (803) 255-0068/(803) 238-2351.

Biography: Corneille

CORNEILLE (Dutch, b. 1922)

The poet and painter Corneille (Cornelis/Corneille Guillaume van Beverloo) was a leading figure in the European CoBrA movement of around 1950. Like many CoBrA artists, he moved to Paris, where he became a prominent post-war European modernist. His colorful, vigorous paintings with often childlike and mythical imagery were typical of CoBrA, though his work tended to be more lyrical and less aggressive than that of other CoBrA artists. In the 1950s, Corneille abandoned most figuration for abstraction, often inspired by landscapes and specific locales. Figuration returned to stay in the 1960s. Corneille traveled extensively and was strongly influenced by ethnographic art, including African iconography. He is a prolific printmaker and produced graphic portfolios with writers and poets, including Octavio Paz. Corneille’s work of the past several decades has been criticized for its repetitiveness and overly stylized, commercial nature, but his prints in this manner are popular in Europe. Corneille participated in the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale and Germany’s Kassel Dokumenta. His work is in prominent museums worldwide, including Paris’ Centre Pompidou, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Essay: CoBrA

C O B R A (1948 –1951)

CoBrA was with Art Informel and Tachism among the post-World War II European art movements that were related to but developed independently from Abstract Expressionism in the United States. CoBrA was named after Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, the capital of many members’ home countries. The group organized exhibitions and published pamphlets, a journal and short monographs. As an organization, CoBrA only existed about three years, but many of its members had prominent careers afterward. The group’s core figures were Dutchmen Karel Appel, Corneille and Constant, Dane Asger Jorn and Belgians Pierre Alechinsky and the poet Christian Dotremont. Dozens of other artists belonged to the group in some fashion, including Lucebert, Reinhoud and Jacques Doucet. CoBrA art combined the energy, spontaneity and painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, the subject matter and imagery of Art Brut, children’s drawings, Nordic mythology and African figuration, and Surrealism’s subconscious approach to making art. It produced an aesthetic that became a mainstay in Western European art.