Corneille, also known as Corneille Guillaume Beverloo, was a painter and
graphic artist who radicalized the conservative Dutch art world in the
early 1950s. He founded CoBrA in 1949, a post-war Expressionist European
movement, along with five other influential artists that included Karel
Appel and Constant. Born to Dutch parents in Liege, Belgium on July 3,
1922, Corneille went on to study art at the Academy of Art in Amsterdam
in 1940, but is generally considered a self-trained painter. His
approach is often described as imaginative and poetic, and is
characterized by an eccentric use of color and his placing of familiar
subjects, such as cats, birds, and women, in mythological or juvenile
settings. “I am a painter of joy,” the artist declared at his 2007
exhibit at the Cobra Museum. He was notably influenced by African art,
which he collected during his time traveling throughout the continent
during the 1950s. His work was also affected by Pablo Picasso and Paul
Klee, and, most notably, Vincent van Gogh’s use of color and form. His
works are featured in collections at the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in
the Netherlands, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston. He died on September 5, 2010 in Paris, France.
Nederlands 
Belgisch