Overview of the Jean Messagier - Karel Appel exhibition, L.A.C. (Lieu d’Art Contemporain), Sigean, 2001
Photography showing Mother and Child

Karel APPEL painted Mother and Child in 1982, at the age of 61. This painting was created during a period of great maturity for the artist, who was already internationally renowned.

This subject is rare in the painter's work. Here, he revisits the universal and ancestral theme of motherhood, originally explored in Christian iconography with the Virgin Mary seated, holding the infant Christ in her arms or on her lap. 

With Mother and Child, APPEL offers us a modern variation, retaining the freedom of form and color inherited from the artistic and aesthetic principles of the CoBrA group, which he co-founded in 1948.

The energy remains fundamental and the structure of the painting remains intuitive and spontaneous; color and material are constructed in the same impetus. 

Seated in an armchair, the mother and her child lend themselves to radical stylization through the use of thick red lines outlining the schematic contours of the two figures and the energetic, textured brushstrokes of the paint layer.
The frontal framing highlights the closeness and exchange between mother and child. 

In this masterful work, APPEL admirably succeeded in combining the monumental power of forms, aesthetic simplification, and the intimacy and universality of the subject matter.
 

There is a drawing executed in 1980 relating to Mother and Child from 1982.

KAREL APPEL                        
UNTITLED, 1980                         
Ink on paper, 66 x 51 cm                 
Henie Onstad Collection
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden (Norway)