Who is Corneille, Gorman’s artist collaboration?
For their most recent artist collaboration, Melbourne-based designer Gorman has launched their latest collection in partnership with the renowned Dutch painter Guillaume van Beverloo — better known by his pseudonym Corneille. An artist who worked with ripening colours and a childlike wonder for the natural world, Corneille’s joyful practice is reiterated throughout Gorman’s collaborative collection.
Image credit: Corneille in the studio rue Santeuil in Paris by Henny Riemens, circa 1955 © Henny Riemens / Maria Austria Institute, Amsterdam (DR)
Corneille was born in Liège, Belgium. Yet by the age of twelve, the artist had moved to the Netherlands, where he eventually studied at the Academy of Art in Amsterdam.
Between 1948 and 1949, he contributed to the founding of CoBrA, an art movement that emerged in Europe following World War II. During the occupation, the Netherlands were disconnected from the art world, and therefore, the late 1940s marked European engagement with the Abstract Expressionist movement. Much like Abstract Expressionism, yet uniquely European, CoBrA acquired a political critique of creative captivity and naturalism. CoBrA emerged in Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br) and Amsterdam (A) as a joyful plea for something beyond the dull and listless experience of war.
For the CoBrA artists, this freedom was rooted in an appreciation for the beautiful naivety of children. Childlike figurative prints, experimentation and unfettered freedom, defined the artistic movement. The European movement differed from American Abstract Expressionism in many ways, such as their value of the process as opposed to the product. The European artists introduced a mythical, ritual-like practice of decorative input from their children. Corneille’s use of rich, bright colours, stark visual contrast, and thick line weight are the markings of free depiction.
In 1999, MoMA included Corneille in its curated show Expressionist Prints from Europe to America. Corneille’s paintings exhibited alongside poignant names such as Jean Dubuffet, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol, represent the warmth and dynamism of CoBrA expressionism. Corneille’s whimsical style and tendency for childlike wonder capture the elated emotions of prospect, freedom and a reinvigorated desire for beauty.
This childlike creativity, beauty, and joy are the defining qualities of Gorman’s posthumous collaboration with Corneille.