Corneille

"CORNEILLE"; GUILLAUME CORNELIS VAN BEVERLOO (Belgium, 1922 - France, 2010).
Untitled, 1992, from the series "Olympic Suite".
Lithograph on 270 gram Velin d'Arches paper, copy P.A. 35/50.
Signed, dated and justified by hand.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.

The Olympic Suite is composed of fifty lithographs and serigraphs chosen to represent various contemporary artistic trends. It was published to commemorate the first centenary of modern Olympism. The chosen artists work in very diverse movements and styles, from the hyperrealism of Antonio López to the abstraction of Sol Lewitt, passing through abstract expressionism, the geometrism of Arden Quin, conceptual art, pop art, the new realism of Baldaccini and Rotella, or the new fauvism of Dokoupil, among others. Among the artists represented there are creators of great international projection, widely recognized by critics.

Better known by his pseudonym Corneille, Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo was a Belgian painter and engraver of Dutch parents. He began studying art in 1940 in Amsterdam, where he met painters such as Constant and Karel Appel. Interested in the work of Pignon, Matisse and Picasso, he began exhibiting in 1946. He visited Hungary soon after and there he discovered surrealism, influenced by the paintings of Klee and Miró. Along with Appel, Constant and others, Corneille was part of the Dutch "Experimentale Group", collaborated with the magazine "Reflex" and was part of the CoBrA movement (1948-1951). After the dissolution of this last group he moved to Paris. Two years later, in 1953, he began to execute etchings, and the following year works in ceramics. The influence of his collection of African art, acquired during a trip to North Africa in 1949, is evident in the evolution of his work from the late fifties, as he gradually abandoned abstract landscape painting to begin to develop an imaginative style, with landscapes depicted from a bird's eye view, exotic animals and highly stylized figures. Corneille is currently represented at the MoMA in New York, the National Gallery of Slovakia, the Museum of Dordrecht, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago and others.