He broke the traditional rules of painting with his apparently spontaneous renderings of human and animal figures in flat, unmixed colours. Many dismissed Appel as a mere ‘dauber’, but for others his work symbolises the freedom regained in the aftermath of the Second World War. In 1950, Appel moved from his birth city of Amsterdam to Paris, and from 1957 onwards he spent long periods in New York. He regarded his work as a manifestation of the ‘barbarity’ of the period in which humanity found itself during the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. Appel continued to work tirelessly on his richly varied oeuvre right up until his death.
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