The Art World is still mourning one of its greatest protagonists in the second half of the 20 th Century: Karel Appel, arguably the most famous of the founders of the Group Cobra, dead last May 3 rd at age 85.

As many others artists of its generation, Appel suffered the tragedy of the World War Two, which had a considerable influence -in a conscious or unconscious way- in all his artistic oeuvre . A native from Amsterdam , Appel was forced to leave the city to avoid be arrested by the occupying Nazis in 1944. Shortly afterwards, he returned to the Dutch capital to take part in an exhibition of young artists in the Stedelijk Museum .

THE NUDE BRUSHSTROKE

"The nude brushstroke, that's what I search" , Appel said in his first years. With his emaciated figures and bright -often disturbing- colours, Appel´s paintings were not well accepted by a criticism still used to the geometric abstraction of his countryman Pietr Mondrian.

Nevertheless, Appel's interests and his eagerness to recover the primitivism as engine of the artistic expression were shared by many of his young contemporaries, and in 1948, when he was only 27 years old, Appel take part of the founder group of an artistic movement that played a highly important role in the artistic evolution in Europe in the second half of the 20 th Century: The Cobra Group.

AN ANIMAL, A NIGHT, A SCREAM, A HUMAN BEING, A WHOLE." THE COBRA GROUP

Founded in 1948 as an answer to the geometric abstraction, the Cobra Group (named with the first letters of the birthplace of its members - Copenhagen , Brussels and Amsterdam- ) had such famous members as PIERRE ALECHINSKY (1927), AGER JORN (1914-1973), CORNEILLE (Cornelis van Beverloo, 1922) or Appel himself. Their art were characterized by spontaneous, vitalistic and impulsive brushstrokes, demanding a complete artistic freedom. The same Appel declared that " I paint like a lout in this lout times"

Nevertheless, in the following years Appel developed his painting into the figuration or even the abstraction. In the late sixties, he dealt with artistic fields such as the sculpture or the illustration. However, he never abandoned the human figure as a reference in his creations.

At present, the Cobra Group has his own Museum in Amstelveen , Netherlands .