Cornelis Guillaum Corneille Van ‘Corneille’ BEVERLOO
1922–2010, Belgium/Netherlands

Education:
Studied at the Art Academy in Amsterdam with courses in drawing and graphic.

His full name is Cornelis Guillaume van Beverloo, but right from the early start of his artistic career, he only used Corneille. His parents, Maria Cornelia Goosen and Willem van Beverloo, came originally from Rotterdam but do the fathers work, they settle in Liége. Corneille grows up in a harmonic middle-class and Catholic/Protestant family.

In the age 21, he is admitted at the Art Academy in Amsterdam but he learns that he moves in another direction that what is being taught in the very conservative Academy. The time at the academy was also marked by the war and the teaching is irregular. Corneille meets Karel Appel at the Academy and they form a long-lasting friendship and collaboration.

Corneille holds his first solo exhibition in Groningen, The Netherlands 1946 and contribute to the exhibition ”Jonge Schilders” (young artists) in The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where Appel, Brands and Rooskens also are represented. He travels to Belgium and - are for the first time – acquainted with African art with professor Burssen in Brussels, an acquaintance which later on, would have a huge impact on his artistic inspiration and motif choice. He begins to work with graphic and experiments with collages and composition work.

Together with Constant and Karel Appel, he is the driving force behind “The Experimental Group” and publishes the magazine “Reflex” which bared many resemblances with the Danish “Høst-group” and the magazine “Helhesten”. Shortly after the group´s foundation it´s absorbed in the internationally COBRA-movement, which Corneille establishes in Cáfe Nôtre Dame together with Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, Constant and Dotremont amongst others in Paris. He starts painting on canvases which are not mounted on easels, but laying on a table and therefore can be “attacked” from all sides. His painting become more dynamic. In the later part of the sixties, leaves Corneille gradually the nonfigurative abstraction and approaches a more down-to-earth and erotic folk-art.

Corneille´s exhibition activity climes and in the next decades his is represented with several solo exhibitions each year and often participates in theme and group shows.

In Scandinavia he exhibited often in galleries in Silkeborg, Copenhagen, Malmoe, Stockholm and Oslo and makes frequent travels to Japan, China, North & South America, Cuba, Africa and all over Europe where his artwork is frequent on display. Børge Birch gets to know Corneille through Asger Jorn and like with most of the COBRA-movement, they form a close friendship and an elaborate collaboration which results in many exhibitions in Galerie Birch, the first solo exhibition in 1949 followed by others in 67 and 74 and then numerous group exhibitions together with his friends Asger Jorn, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Pierre Alechinsky and Dotremont.

Corneille is one of the finest representatives of modern abstract art and his artwork are displayed in leading galleries and museums all over the world.

Selected representations:
Statens Museum for Kunst
Louisiana
Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum
Randers Kunstmuseum
Silkeborg Kunstmuseum
Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, Holland
Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, Holland
Gemeentemuseum Helmond, Holland
Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Holland
SMAK - Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium
Musée d´Art Moderne et Contemporain Liège, Belgium
Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany
Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, USA
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA
MAMBA - Museo de Arte Moderno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentine
Brooklyn museum, USA
Musée de Rome, Italy.