March Auction
Lot 168:
Karel Appel (Dutch, 1921-2006), Femme Nue, Signed Color Lithograph
Description
Karel Appel (Dutch, 1921-2006), Femme Nue, Signed Unnumbered Color Lithograph
Description
Color lithograph depicting a stylized standing female nude, executed in Karel Appel’s bold and expressive graphic language. The figure is rendered frontally with exaggerated facial features and simplified anatomy, outlined in thick black lines and filled with saturated planes of turquoise blue, red, yellow, green, and white. Energetic contours, splashes, and irregular color fields convey spontaneity and emotional intensity, characteristic of Appel’s mature printmaking style.
Details
Artist: Karel Appel (Dutch, 1921-2006)
Title: Femme
Medium: Color lithograph on paper
Signature: Signed in pencil Appel, lower right
Date / Period: Circa 1960s
Dimensions: 65.5 × 48 cm (sheet size)
Edition: Unnumbered impression
Condition: General handling wear consistent with works on paper, including light edge wear and minor surface marks; colors remain strong and vibrant. No major tears or restorations observed.
Catalogue Note
This lithograph corresponds to Karel Appel’s well-documented composition Femme, a subject he explored extensively across paintings and prints during the postwar period. A color lithograph of the same composition, in a larger format (75.5 × 55 cm), is held in the collection of the Rupert Art Foundation, confirming the institutional recognition of this image within Appel’s graphic oeuvre.
The present example is an unnumbered, signed impression, a format consistent with Appel’s lithographic practice, which included numbered editions as well as unnumbered impressions issued outside the main edition. Differences in sheet size and numbering are therefore typical and should be understood as part of the artist’s print production rather than as later reproductions.
A founding member of the CoBrA movement, Appel is celebrated for his instinctive, childlike visual vocabulary and rejection of academic convention.
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