Corneille - L'Aigle Noir (The Black Eagle)

Corneille Guillaume van Beverloo (1922-2010), better known under his pseudonym Corneille, was a Dutch painter and printmaker. He studied art at the Academy of Art in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. He was one of the founders of the REFLEX movement in 1948 and in 1949 he was also one of the founders of the expressionist group COBRA, along with Karel Appel and Constant. COBRA  advocated experimental art against aesthetism and specialisation. Corneille was strongly influenced by Miró and Klee. He moved to Paris around 1951 and began collecting African art. It wasn't until his work took on a more imaginative, colourful, brightly hedonistic turn, that he became a truly popular artist. His collections can be found in the permanent public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.