Biography

Charles Cobelle was a French-born American painter and printmaker of Modern Art. Best known for his use of open lines within washes of tones and colors, he forged a personal style directly influenced by the works of French Fauvist artist Raoul Dufy, with whom he apprenticed as a young man. Cobelle continued painting lively scenes of regattas, horse races, and French towns even after moving from France and settling in the United States, where he found great commercial success and eventually gained American citizenship. Born Carl Edelman in 1902 in Alsace-Lorraine, France, he studied at the University of Munich and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, as well as with Marc Chagall, before emigrating to the United States in the late 1920s. There, he became known for both his commissioned murals and advertisement illustrations alongside his continued painting practice. Today, his work is held in the collection of the Hartford Athenaeum, Tamanaco Hotel, and the Mark Hopkins Hotel, among others. Cobelle died in 1994 in New York, NY.