Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo, better known as Corneille, was born on July 3, 1922 in Liège, Belgium, as the son of Dutch parents. His artistic path began largely as a self-taught teacher, although he also briefly took formal art lessons at the Amsterdam Academy from 1940 to 1942. His first solo exhibition took place in Groningen in 1946. Originally heavily influenced by Picasso, Corneille found his own style in 1948 when he joined the avant-garde art movement CoBrA, which he co-founded together with Karel Appel and the brothers Jan and Constant Nieuwenhuys.

In 1950, Corneille moved his life and work to Paris, after which many international trips followed—to North Africa, the Sahara, North and South America and the Antilles—which had a lasting influence on his art. From the 1960s onwards he developed a new figurative style, in which themes such as birds, flowers and human figures became characteristic of his oeuvre.

Corneille remained active in the art world well into his old age, driven by what he considered a vocation rather than work or hobby. He kept his studio in Paris, where he devoted himself to his creations, far away from the public gaze; he rarely allowed visitors to enter his artistic sanctuary.