The Reality of Karel Appel

The Reality of Karel Appel (1962), directed by Jan Vrijman, is a short but striking documentary that captures the Dutch artist Karel Appel at work in his Paris studio. Shot in close proximity to the artist, the film follows Appel as he gathers impressions from the city and translates them into painting through a forceful, physical engagement with the canvas. Thick paint is squeezed, flung, slashed, and struck onto the surface, accompanied by jagged experimental music and jazz that amplifies the sense of urgency and movement.

The camera presents painting not as a contemplative act, but as an event – performative, rhythmic, and intense. Awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 1962, the film quickly became one of the most iconic cinematic portrayals of the modern artist at work.

Vrijman’s documentary helped cement the enduring image of Appel as the archetypal spontaneous painter, famously summarized by the artist’s own remark: “I just mess around.” The film reinforces this perception by emphasizing raw gesture, speed, and apparent impulsiveness. Yet this seductive image has increasingly been challenged.

Recent research into Appel’s materials and working methods reveals a far more complex practice, one that often began with drawings and carefully considered compositional decisions. Rather than undermining the film, this tension has become central to its contemporary relevance. The Reality of Karel Appel is now understood not as a transparent document of truth, but as a powerful construction of artistic myth – one that shaped how Appel’s work was received for decades.

The film must also be read through Appel’s position within the postwar European avant-garde and his role as a co-founder of the Cobra movement. Active between 1948 and 1951, Cobra rejected both naturalism and sterile abstraction in favor of experimentation, collective energy, and inspiration drawn from children’s drawings, outsider art, and so-called primitive forms.

Though the movement was short-lived, it provided a lasting conceptual framework for Appel’s practice, marked by constant oscillation between abstraction and figuration. By the time Vrijman filmed him in the early 1960s, Appel had already moved between Amsterdam, Paris, and New York, absorbing influences from Art Brut, Abstract Expressionism, and jazz culture, while insisting on painting as a site of freedom, risk, and renewal.

Today, The Reality of Karel Appel occupies a renewed position within both film and art history. Younger generations of artists, particularly in the United States, have returned to Appel’s work, drawn to its physicality, material excess, and refusal of stylistic closure. This reassessment has been accompanied by exhibitions, scholarly symposia, and conservation studies that complicate the long-standing narrative of pure spontaneity. Rather than diminishing Appel’s achievement, this deeper understanding situates the film as a key historical artifact: not only a portrait of an artist in action, but a lens through which the ideals, contradictions, and ambitions of postwar modernism can be reconsidered.