Child with Birds

Drawing inspiration from folk art and children's doodles and rejecting all formal theories and strictures of style, Karel Appel once remarked, "I paint like a barbarian in this barbarous time." An Amsterdam native, Appel found kindred spirits in Copenhagen and Brussels and together they founded CoBrA, issuing a manifesto extolling the virtues of collaboration and experimentation and exhibiting their vibrant, impetuous abstractions in several groundbreaking shows throughout the European continent.

Zürich, Switzerland