De appel-iep

In 1961 filmmaker Jan Vrijman made DE WERKELIJKHEID VAN KAREL APPEL, a portrait of Holland‘s most famous painter of the Cobra movement (1948-1951). Ed van der Elsken also made a film about the artist in 1961. After an introduction by the director of the Stedelijk Museum Willem Sandberg, the camera follows Appel during his so-called ‘elms project’. In his studio we see how he fashions and paints an elm stump with the impromptu and profuse grand movements that so typify his style. Next, the Cobra painter places the knotty trunk in a park in Amsterdam. Van der Elsken films the curious reactions to the object-turned-art by passers-by, as well as the children who spontaneously start dancing around the tree.