Corneille

Born in Liege (Belgium) in 1922 Cornelis Guillaume Beverloo, Corneille, has lived in Paris since 1950, and was a cofounder of the famous group CoBrA (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam), along with artists as famous as Appel, Jorn, Constant, Alechinsky and Pedersen. In 1956, he won the Guggenheim Prize for the Low Countries. His work can be found in the Collection de la Ville de Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Brooklyn Museum in New York and other famous public collections. His work has the force of primitive art and the fantasy imagination of dreams and children's worlds. Disregarding classic canons of compositions and style, Corneille has developed his own pictorial language, which is characterized by intentionally child-like graphic elements alternating with areas of primary colours. His work is full of fabulous, chimeric beings. The landscapes and elements he depicts all have unreal proportions and colouring. In this way Corneille frees himself from the ties of reason, and creates work that is reminiscent of early art.