The name of Karel Appel (1921 – 2006) is inextricably linked to jazz music. Like many of his Cobra colleagues, the Dutch artist was a passionate jazz lover. To create the right working conditions, he played rousing jazz records in his studio.
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The documentary ‘The Reality of Karel Appel’, made by Jan Vrijman in 1961, shows how intuitively and uninhibitedly Appel applied paint to his canvases. Initially, the artist had reservations about the filming process because he thought Vrijman would disturb his concentration. However, the filmmaker came up with the brilliant idea of positioning his camera behind an opening in the canvas. This allowed viewers to literally come face to face with the fierce painting beast who imposed his will on the material with a palette knife or his bare hands.
Karel Appel’s infamous statement, ‘I just mess around,’ was misunderstood by many people. Thanks to Appel’s years of painting experience, he trusted his intuition, just like an improvising musician. When Appel spontaneously threw paint onto the canvas, the result was completely different from the imitation attempts of daredevils who sneered, ‘My little sister could do that too.’
During his stay in New York and Paris in the 1950s, Appel met musical heroes such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie. These jazz musicians were only too happy to visit his studio to be immortalised by the Dutch painter. Appel’s powerful and intense bursts of colour were, in turn, a source of inspiration for musicians. Appel also made music himself. For the aforementioned documentary, Jan Vrijman used improvisations by Dizzy Gillespie and excerpts from Appel’s own album ‘Musique Barbare’, on which the artist played all the instruments himself.
In 2000, Karel Appel designed one of the most beautiful posters in the history of North Sea Jazz. At that time, the festival was still held in The Hague’s Congress Centre (now the World Forum), where Appel had painted a huge mural on the façade in 1968.
