This year we celebrate the centenary of the birth of Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo. One of the founders of the CoBrA group and one of the cornerstones on which the gallery’s success was built. 
Led by a fascination for Corneille and the joie de vivre of his paintings, our father, Siwert Bergström, visited the artist in Paris in 1976, where the two of them met in a sidewalk café by the Rue de Clignancourt. Corneille promised to produce a sequence of engravings for the gallery. This marked the beginning of a fruitful friendship and a close working relationship.
We were 14 and 12 years old respectively when Corneille first exhibited at the gallery in Jönköping in 1978. Our memory of that first meeting with him is of a kindly man with a violet-coloured scarf and peering eyes whose penetrating gaze testified to the greatness of the human being behind them. It was Corneille who encouraged our father to move the gallery to Malmö in 1984. Together they produced a large number of graphic editions and art books which led to numerous visits and exhibitions over the course of the years. 

Corneille was born in 1922 in Liège, Belgium, to Dutch parents. After leaving school, he studied at the Academy of Arts in Amsterdam from 1940 to 1943 and had his first exhibition in Groningen in 1946. The very same year he visited Paris and felt immediately at home in the art metropolis. Together with Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, Dotremont, Pierre Alechinsky and Constant he founded the CoBrA group in 1948.  
The works of Paul Klee and Joan Miró exerted a strong influence on Corneille and, like them, he too was inspired by African culture, with which he became well acquainted during several journeys to Africa. Initially his art was non-figurative, but he gradually turned to painting fantasy landscapes in warm tones, frequently characterised by symbiotic representations of female figures and birds. Since his debut in Groningen Corneille has taken part in hundreds of exhibitions at different galleries and is represented in museums all over the world.
In accordance with his wishes, Corneille rests beside his fellow countryman and predecessor, the great master, Vincent van Gogh: two artists from totally different eras, with different life stories, who are nevertheless sure to discover that they share a great deal in common.
Corneille played a big part in our upbringing and our education into the world of art. He is an important representative of his age, whose work still continues to spread joy and inspiration. We are convinced that he has earned his rightful place in the art history of our time – as an artist who truly knew how to celebrate womanhood, joy and the beauty in life. 

Thomas & Kalle Bergström