oil on canvas, signed and dated 'Corneille 51' lower right and signed on the stretcher, 54 x 65 cm.

Provenance: Acquired by Aldo and Hannie van Eyck in the mid-1950s; Exhibited: Liège, Palais des Beaux-Arts, IIe Exposition Internationale d'art experimental, 6 October-6 November 1951, no. 113 or 114 (see painting hanging on the left wall in Liege, © Violette Cornelius / Nederlands Fotomuseum) Paris, Galerie Collette Allendy, Corneille, 13-26 March 1953; The Hague, Corneille, 14 July-3 September 1961, no. 16 (this exhibition travelled to Eindhoven, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, 15 September-19 October 1961); Amstelveen, Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Corneille 100, 3 July 2022-15 January 2023; Literature: Museumjournaal: themanummer Cobra, VII, no. 7/8, January/February 1962, p. 188 (illustrated in b/w); F.Th. Gribling, Corneille, Amsterdam, 1972, fig. 12 (illustrated in b/w)

The present lot is one of two paintings titled 'Ville en Mouvement' which Corneille created in 1951. That same year both works were included in the second Cobra-exhibition in Liège (no. 113 'Ville en Mouvement I' and no. 114 'Ville en Mouvement II'). The other painting has been in the collection of the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, since 1954 (inv.no. 67). In a postcard sent by Corneille to Aldo van Eyck in 1957, the artist lovingly describes the Van Abbe painting as "het broertje van jullie schilderij" ('the little brother of your painting') (postcard collection Van Eyck family). In a photograph taken by Violette Cornelius at the Liège exhibition, the present lot can be discerned in the left background, where it is shown in the presence of two Alberto Giacometti sculptures (collection Nederlands Fotomuseum, inv.no. VIC-521).