NOT BORED! writes:

Karl Appel, 1921–2006
Philippe Dagen

Born in Amsterdam in 1921, Karel Appel received his first lessons in painting from one of his uncles in 1936. From 1940 to 1943, he was a student at Amsterdam's Academy of Beaux Arts, where he became friends with another student one year younger than him, Corneille van Beverloo, who was already called [just] Corneille. In 1946, the two friends found themselves in Liege, hometown of Corneille. Then they showed their work together in Amsterdam in 1948. It was then that they met another Amsteldamois, born in 1920: Constant Nieuwenhuis, surnamed Constant.

Together, on 16 July 1948, they founded the Dutch Experimental Group. In common they had youth, their refusal of all academicism and their taste for Matisse, Picasso and Miro. Several weeks later, they were in Paris, in the company of the Belgian poet Christian Dotremont and the Danish painter Asger Jorn. On 8 November, in a cafe near Notre Dame, they drafted a manifesto of rupture, [entitled] The cause being agreed. Several days later, Dotremont came up with the name of the emerging group: CO for Copenhagen, BR for Brussels, [and] A for Amsterdam. Thus, COBRA. Appel was thus one of the founders of this essential post-war movement.

The Story Behind the Zapatista Red Alert:

Other Campaign Arrives at
Zero Hour

Bertha Rodri'guez Santos and Al Giordano, NarcoNews

MEXICO CITY — From his first statements early this morning on Mexico City's
historic Alameda, Zapatista Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos was clearly
informed about — and visibly bothered by — the police riot underway in the
nearby city of Texcoco, where 800 heavily armed riot cops stormed the local
flower growers' market in the dawn's early light, leading to a violent
nationally televised standoff between the firearms of above and the
worktools of below. By the afternoon — after "Delegate Zero" traveled
through downtown Mexico City by foot, by subway and by motorcycle, through
its most working-class neighborhoods, listening to the grievances of the
people — he exploded in the Plaza of the Three Cultures: The Zapatistas have
gone on Red Alert, the Other Campaign is suspended, and Marcos is heading to
the scene of the crime to confront the Mexican State.

Zapatistas Announce May Day Labor Rally

Al Giordano

In Nezahualcoyotl, Marcos Announces that May 1 Labor March “Will Meet In
Front of the U.S. Embassy” in Mexico City...
Thousands of Workers in “Neza
York” Greet the Zapatista Subcomandante and Join with the Other Campaign

NEZAHUALCOYOTL, MEXICO STATE, APRIL 26, 2006: Zapatista Subcomandante
Marcos was received this afternoon by thousands of urban workers from the
rough-and-tumble metropolis of Nezahualcoyotl that borders Mexico City.
Street vendors, factory, retail and construction workers, laid off
meatpackers, taxi and bus drivers, teachers, immigrants from Oaxaca and
other Mexican states, and former immigrants that returned from working in
the United States, plus their sons and daughters from grade schools,
junior highs, and high schools – many who flocked directly from class to
the afternoon rally in front of City Hall still wearing their school
uniforms – gave “Delegate Zero” a warm and attentive welcome.

It was there that Marcos decided to drop an information bomb on two
governmental powers: the Mexican federal government and “the Yankee
Embassy” of Washington and Wall Street: The May Day workers march,
announced last February in Tlaxcala by the Zapatista spokesman, will
assemble in front of that United States Embassy, Monday, at noon, on ritzy
Paseo de la Reforma, on the very same day that Mexicans and
Mexican-Americans across the U.S. border will march and many will strike
from their jobs in protest of repressive measures against them up North.