BEVERLOO CORNEILLE. Opening card. Color serigraphy. Signed and dated -97. 205/300.

21 x 27 cm.

Corneille was born in Belgium in 1922. After finishing school, he studied drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam 1940-1943. As a painter he was self-taught. The first exhibition was shown in 1946 in the Dutch city of Groningen together with the artists in the Dutch Experiment Group Reflex. That same year, Corneille came to Paris and from the very first moment he felt at home in the art metropolis. Together with Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, Dotremont and Constant, Corneille was involved in the formation of the COBRA group in Paris in 1948. The group was also joined by many other artists, poets and architects, including the Swedish artists CO Hultén, Max Walter Svanberg and Anders Österlin. Like his role models Paul Klee and Joan Miró, Corneille was inspired by African art that he came in contact with during several trips to Africa. At first, Corneille's art was non-figurative, but eventually the motifs came to be characterized by fantasy landscapes in warm strong colors where often the woman and the bird are in symbiosis with each other. The woman represents the beautiful and voluptuous and the bird stands for freedom and power.