Flying Fish, 1971

Gallery Moos, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto

"Appel's Appels," Musée d'art contemporain, Montreal, April-May 1972, no. 69

As one of the most illustrious Dutch artists of the twentieth century, Karel Appel is celebrated today for his vibrant, stylistic experimentation across a variety of mediums. His works are whimsical, created using a gestural application of paint, deriving from a combination of children’s art, primitive art and folk art. This sculpture represents a colourful fish in shades of blue, purple, yellow, orange, and black. The tones are repeated throughout the work, thus inviting viewers to trace all the different planes of the interconnected aluminum sheets. "Flying Fish" captures the essence of the CoBrA group, whose art was characterized by intensely figurative content drawn from the unconscious mind and expressed in radiant primary tones.