Exhibitions

KAREL APPEL: NEW APPARITIONS STALK THE EARTH

Reece Museum (ETSU) / 363 Stout Dr., Johnson City , TN April 20 - May 22nd

Karel Appel, Corneille, Pierre Alechinsky, Georges Braque, Paul Gauguin, Käthe Kollwitz, Joan Miró, Georges Rouault, Erich Heckel, Carol Lindgren, Marley Cooper, Carole Laniz, Albert Gleizes, Susan Ragan, Alexander Calder, Helen Gerardia, Jack Schrader

The Reece Museum presents New Apparitions Stalk the Earth. The exhibition primarily features the work of Karel Appel along with other artists including Corneille, Pierre Alechinsky, Georges Braque, Paul Gauguin, Käthe Kollwitz, Joan Miró, and others. New Apparitions Stalk the Earth features thirty-seven works, all from the Museum’s permanent collection along with in depth text panels exploring the connection to the Reece Museum’s past and current collection practices.

Karel Appel (1921-2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, muralist, and poet. Widely regarded as one of the most important and influential artists of post-World War II Europe, Appel rebelled against his studio training and was a founding member of multiple influential avant-garde groups, where he experimented with technique, color, and form. Since 1946 Appel’s work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions. In the 1970s, Appel mounted a traveling retrospective exhibition that toured American institutions and brought awareness of his work to new audiences.

This exhibition explores Karel Appel’s legacy within the framework of collections and exhibitions within a global network of cultural institutions. The artworks on display in the exhibition were collected between 1966-1981 to become part of the museum’s educational collection, useful for art history courses of the time and mysterious to public folklorists and Appalachian studies scholars of today.