HAMILTON, ONTARIO.- The Art Gallery of Hamilton presents Karel Appel: The Cry of Colour, on view through October 8, 2007, curated by Patrick Shaw Cable. Deceased in 2006, Dutch artist Karel Appel was the most well known member of the international Cobra group (named from the first letters of the founding artists’ home cities of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam). Organized after World War II, the Cobra artists rejected Western culture’s emphasis on reason and embraced spontaneous expressionist forms in reaction to the horrors of war. They were inspired by primitive and folk art as well as children’s art, an influence particularly evident in the jarring colours and whimsical subjects that Appel favoured. The Art Gallery of Hamilton, chosen by Karel Appel in the 1970s as “the institution of record” for his graphic works and other multiples, possesses an extensive collection of the artist’s colour lithographs. The Cry of Colour will feature more than a dozen Appel lithographs in the gallery’s interior stairwell, a fitting setting for his work’s exuberant decorative forms and bright colour contrasts.