Karel Appel

From the 1970s onwards Appel had his own studio in New York, but he never sought American citizenship since he identified as a European artist. In New York he met jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, and Miles Davis, whom he painted, as well as fellow artists from the New York School-especially Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Soon after his return to Paris, Appel realized Rencontre au printemps (1958), a monumental painting commissioned by UNESCO to decorate its new headquarters, which opened in Paris in 1959. The immense dimensions of this painting correspond to works from the New York School rather than to their European counterparts, and it is stylistically reminiscent of action painting. This work was exhibited by Galerie Max Hetzler for the first time since then, more than half a century later.