Corneille - Lithograph 54/125, signed m.o. - 1988

Corneille (Liège, 1922 – 2010) Guillaume Cornelis Beverlo, better known as Corneille (July 3, 1922), was born in Liège, Belgium, the child of Dutch parents. Although largely self-taught, he nevertheless took art courses at the Amsterdam Academy between 1940 and 1942. In 1946, he held his first exhibition in Groningen. Initially strongly influenced by the work of Picasso, he broke away from this in 1948 when he joined the CoBrA group, of which he was a co-founder together with Karel Appel and the brothers Jan and Constant Nieuwenhuys. In 1950, he moved from Amsterdam to Paris. Subsequently, he traveled abroad several times: North Africa, the Sahara, North America, the Antilles, and South America. These travels largely determined the nature of his work. From 1960 onwards, he reverted to a new figuration, in which birds, flowers, and often characters became part of his artistic vocabulary. Corneille remained just as industrious later on as the Corneille of earlier times. He himself claimed that painting was not a hobby or a job, but rather a calling. Corneille had his studio in the French capital, Paris. Visitors were virtually not tolerated by the artist.