Painter, born in Liège to Dutch parents on 3 July 1922 – passed away in Auvers-sur-Oise, 5 September 2010 was a Belgian painter, sculptor and printmaker. He studied in Amsterdam, where in 1948 he founded the Reflex movement together with Appel and subsequently was part of the Cobra group. His first solo show was in 1950 in Copenhagen; in 1951 he exhibited for the first time in Paris at the Salon de Mai. After a period of work at the engraver Hayter’s atelier in Paris, he went to Albissola where together with Jorn he began an intense activity as a ceramist. A series of important solo exhibitions in the museums of Brussels and Amsterdam, and the awarding of the Guggenheim Prize, date back to 1956. A major retrospective of C. took place in 1966 at the Stadelijk Museum in Amsterdam and at the Charleroi Museum in 1973.
Corneille, after having developed his artistic discourse in an abstract sense towards an abstract landscape during the 1950s, returned to figuration at the beginning of the 1960s, impressed by the colors of nature in southern Europe and northern Africa, shifting his interest towards expressionism.

In 1950 the artist settled permanently in Paris and began exhibiting at the Salon de Mai. In 1953 he studied etching with Stanley William Hayter in Paris and ceramics with Tullio Mazzotti in Albisola, Italy, during the summers of 1954 and 1955. Corneille received the International Guggenheim Prize for the Netherlands in 1956, the year of his first solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In 1957 he participated in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris. During this period he traveled extensively, visiting Africa, South America, the Netherlands Antilles and the United States.

In 1962 Corneille had his first solo exhibition in New York at the Lefebre Gallery. During the next four summers he worked on gouaches in the Spanish coastal town of Cadaques. In 1963 a Corneille retrospective was held at the Museum of Antibes, France. In 1968 he created mosaics in Vela-Luka, Yugoslavia. Among the numerous solo exhibitions of the 1970s we remember those presented at the Art Gallery of Milan and at the Museu de Arte of Sao Paulo in 1975, at the Galerie Espace in Amsterdam in 1977 and at the CM Gallery in Rome and at the Galerie Kände Malåra, in Jönköping, Sweden, in 1978. From the late 1970s onwards, his art became more figurative and his subjects included tropical landscapes and gardens, animals and women.

From 1982, for the realization of his most ambitious chalcographic projects, he availed himself of the collaboration of a famous Italian engraver, the master Luigi Guardigli; Neapolitan” engraver of Picasso and other greats of the 20th century; also thanks to the intercession of our mutual friend Franco Piruca. In 1987 he collaborated with Bengt Lindström, also an expert engraver, on the illustration of a book.

Among the founders of the Cobra group, C. represents its least overtly expressionist aspect: the pictorial material, although exalted in the violent chromatic ranges typical of movement, finds constructive support in more defined and precise forms. The poetic universe that C. explores with meticulous consistency in his paintings is that of his imaginary ‘landscapes’. His fairytale narratives arise from an apparently absent-minded and childish alphabet, which is actually sensitive to the evocations of a dreamlike and introspective dimension.

Corneille’s poetics were strongly influenced by Miró and Klee. After the group disbanded in 1951 he moved to Paris and began collecting African art. These artifacts became evident in his works, which began to take on a more imaginative style, such as bird’s-eye view landscapes, exotic birds, and stylized forms. His work is in the collection of the Center Georges Pompidou.

Until his death Corneille lived and worked in Paris and visited Israel where he worked with Atelier Jaffa.

On September 24, 2003, an exhibition of his prints opened at the Israeli Art Museum in Ramat Gan, Israel. He died in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.