[1] Corneille was born in Liège, Belgium, although his parents were Dutch and moved back to the Netherlands when he was 12.

When he heard during a Cobra Museum visit in the nineties that there was an “Art Lending for Children” he talked with the founder Roby Bellemans[5] and asked him to send more information to his home in Paris about this project.

He started with a support list and persuaded other artists such as Shinkichi Tajiri to sign.

After the group dissolved in 1951 he moved to Paris and began collecting African art.

On 24 September 2003 an exhibition of his prints opened at the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art, Israel.