Karel Appel (1921-2006) Dutch, Signed Lithograph "Happy Battle". Bold abstract expressionism featuring energetic black, red, blue, and purple brushstrokes that evoke simplified or fractured faces, produced in 1979. Signed in pencil bottom right. 

Overall Size: 31 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 22 1/2 x 30 1/2 in. 

Karel Appel (1921-2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet best known as a founding member of the avant-garde CoBrA movement in 1948, which sought to revive spontaneity and raw expression in postwar European art. Born in Amsterdam, he studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten before rejecting academic conventions in favor of bold color, aggressive brushwork, and childlike imagery that was initially deemed highly controversial by the art world. Appel’s work often features distorted figures, animals, and mythic forms rendered with thick impasto and an intense, energetic palette, inspired and influenced by Picasso, Matisse, and Dubuffet. His art gained international recognition in the 1950s and 1960s, and he went on to produce a prolific body of paintings, sculptures, murals, and prints for decades before his death in Zurich, Switzerland from heart disease. Today he is regarded as one of the most important figures in postwar European Expressionism.

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