Karel Appel - Litho E.A - Snake, signed r.o. - 1980

From a young age, Appel knew he wanted to become a painter, but his parents preferred him to work in the barbershop. He had to work for his father for a few years. In 1942, he went to study painting at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Dissatisfied with this career choice, his parents put him out on the street.

Appel followed this education until 1944. At the academy he learned about art history, about which he had learned little at home. He trained in traditional drawing and painting. To make his studies possible, Appel received a grant from the Department of Public Information and Arts (DVK). According to Adriaan Venema, Appel regularly contacted the national socialist Ed Gerdes, head of the Architecture, Visual Arts and Applied Arts department of the Department of Public Information and Arts, to obtain this grant, from whom he often asked for extra support, which he did not always receive.
In retrospect, Appel was accused of going to study during the German occupation, while the Germans were pursuing a very repressive policy against the so-called Entartete Kunst in their own country and within the Netherlands mainly against artists of Jewish descent. Appel himself stated that he had never collaborated with the Germans, that he would have liked a grant, but that he had only attended the academy to learn to paint well. Appel therefore did not feel connected to the Germans. Art was a matter of the heart and political preferences interested him little. Other artists were more principled during the war and refused, for example, to become a member of the Kultuurkamer, which meant that they were not allowed to work, sell and had to do without an income.
During his time at the Rijksakademie, Appel met Corneille. He met Constant a little later. An intense friendship developed between them that would last for many years. After the war, Appel travelled with Constant to Liège and Paris. The two exhibited together.
At the beginning of the Hunger Winter, Appel fled his home – he no longer lived with his parents – for fear of being arrested by the German occupiers because of his refusal to work in Germany. During the winter he wandered through the Netherlands, in the direction of his brother who lived near Hengelo. Painting was hardly possible during that period, although he did draw a few portraits of starving people.
After the war, Appel returned to Amsterdam weakened, where he had a brief relationship with Truusje, who soon died of tuberculosis. There were few who saw anything in Appel at the time. Exceptions were the art critic H. Klinkenberg, who wrote a positive article about Appel, and the wealthy Liège collector Ernest van Zuylen, who bought art by Appel every year.