Found a collection of Karel Appel, which disappeared 10 years ago

More than 400 works by a well-known Dutch expressionist artist were discovered in an inconspicuous warehouse in England in January 2012.

Karel Appel

Karel Appel, a leading 20th century expressionist painter, died in 2006 at the age of 85. He could not recover after the theft of his work in 2002, which, according to experts, was estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars. His collection disappeared while moving it from the artist’s home studio to Amsterdam to the premises of the Fund named after him. The collection included paintings, drawings, sketches, sketches, draft notes. The theft of the collection was immediately reported to the police and reported to the world register of theft of works of art (Art Loss Register, ALR).

The warehouse, where a collection of paintings by a Dutch artist was discovered, was acquired in December 2011 by a logistics company. Before Christmas, while cleaning the premises, the workers of this company found 8 boxes with some works of art. These boxes did not have any documentation. One of the managers of the logistics company, having found the signatures of “Karel Appel” on almost all the works, turned to Bonhams to evaluate the 30 works that he took in one of the boxes.

The manager was amazed when he was informed that the works of art that he brought were in the database of the theft of works of art and have been wanted since 2002. For almost 2 months, negotiations were held with the logistics company to return the values to their rightful owner - the Karel Appel Foundation in the Netherlands. The logistics company, which discovered the stolen work, asked not to indicate its name anywhere in order to avoid pressure from the press and maintain its image.

Karel Appel was an expressionist painter, engraver and sculptor. For his enormous contribution to contemporary world art, he received the UNESCO Prize in 1954. Many of the artist’s stolen works were experimental ideas and sketches for future paintings that never came to an end during his lifetime. Now the Karel Appel Foundation has been enriched with new exhibits, which have found a worthy place in the exhibition halls of the Fund, adding to the catalog of works by the famous artist of Holland. Finally, after ten searches, the extinct collection returned to its country again.