Karel Appel Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonne

This work presents a catalogue raisonne of every work the artist has created from his earliest sculptures of 1947 to his works of the past year. It follows the artist's mental and artistic development, outlining the various threads of his works: the childlike aspects of his art, the role of insanity, the anticipation of death, and his constantly changing creative expression. The whole range of Appel's sculptural career to date is discussed here, from his notorious "Questioning Children" relief assemblages and totem-like structures of the late 1940s; the organic shapes of his rough, wildly painted olive-tree roots of 1960; and the Standing Nudes of the 1980s; to his latest works - the Pyre Series - complex, massive sculptural fantasies that combine painting, sculpture, architecture, and found objects and are based on folk legends and primitive myths.