Corneille

Corneille (Guillaume Cornelis Beverloo, 1922-2010) was born in Liège to Dutch parents. He took drawing and etching classes at the Amsterdam academy (1940-1942) and was otherwise self-taught. His earliest inspirations were Picasso, Doucet and Miró.

In 1948 Corneille, together with Karel Appel and Constant, founded the CoBrA movement, an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. The group used art to express their 'abhorrence of war and prevailing artistic conceptions', with experimentation as their central guiding principle.

After moving to Paris in 1950 and travelling extensively through North Africa and America, his paintings evolved towards vivid, mythical figures celebrating women and birds. Corneille died on 5 September 2010 in Auvers-sur-Oise.