GUILLAUME CORNELIS "CORNEILLE" VAN BEVERLOO (Belgium, 1922 - France, 2010).
"Femme à l'oiseau", 1989.
Mixed media on cardboard.
Signed, dated and titled in the lower right corner.
Size: 24 x 31 cm; 54 x 62 cm (frame).
Better known by his pseudonym Corneille, Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo was a Belgian painter and printmaker 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 shortly afterwards, where he discovered Surrealism and was influenced by the painting of Klee and Miró. Along with Appel, Constant and others, Corneille was a member of the Dutch "Experimentale Group", collaborated with the magazine "Reflex" and took part in the CoBrA movement (1948-1951). After the dissolution of the latter group, he moved to Paris. Two years later, in 1953, he began to produce etchings, and the following year he began to produce ceramic works. 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 1950s onwards, as he gradually abandoned abstract landscape painting and began to develop an imaginative style, with landscapes depicted from a bird's eye view, exotic animals and highly stylised figures. Corneille is currently represented at the MoMA in New York, the National Gallery of Slovakia, the Dordrecht Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago and others.