CoBrA is not (only) a snake

CoBrA artists do not aim at modernising art, they want to set it free, instead, by giving vein to the innerest compulsions, until then repressed in the name of rationality. As a result, the works of art are considered under an expressionist and animistic point of view and compared to vital beings, and the style of painting becomes passional and instinctive, as innovative and shocking as that of children.

The group organises only two major exhibitions: the former at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1949, and the latter at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Liegi in 1951, only a few months before dissolving itself. Notwithstanding its very short duration, this movement -- a milestone in the European abstract expressionism -- plays a crucial role in overcoming the contrast between figurativeness and abstractism that is a key feature of the end of Fourties and the early Fifties, and has an unparalleled influence on the contemporary art, whose effects are still visible, nowadays. 

CoBrA is not only an acronym: at first, the visitor thought (and thinks) of the snake, and this may be no coincidence: in psychoanalysis the snake is a symbol of renewal and change, and who else more than CoBrA artists wanted to break with the past? Tired of all the nationalisms that had led to the second World War, as well as annoyed by the avant-guardes that appeared to be too smug, calligraphic, and dominated by a surrealism unable to instill any emotion, the group members experimented new expressive forms. Thus they became a myth, a breeding ground for exploration and further developments, while maintaining their personal styles and techniques.

Christian Dotremont and Pierre Alechinski from Belgium, Asger Jorn and Carl-Henning Pedersen from Denmark, and Karel Appel, Constant and Corneille from the Netherlands are among the most representative CoBrA artists.

The many works of art on display (around 150 pieces) are arranged to highlight the personal artistic path of each CoBrA member. On display mostly paintings but also photographs, videos, drawings, and reviews, altogether contribuing  to recreate the poetics and the art of CoBrA group.

Some pieces have an explosive expressive power: like the painting begging children by Karel Appel, where poor children are portrayed in the act of begging at a railway station: a masterpiece of expressiveness, austere and disturbing, where the semiabstractism aims at (and succeeds in) intensifying the emaciation of the children, easily recognisable due to their big eyes and stretched hands.

CoBrA artists made various and heterogeneous experiences. After participating in the establishment of the Dutch Experimental Group, Corneille was one of the founders of CoBrA together with Appel, Constant, Jorn and Dotremont. He was one of the more active promoters of the first international exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum. Besides, he travelled a great deal between 1948 and 1951, visiting Tunisia, Algeria and the Hoggar Mountains. The exotic influence of such experiences is evident both in the subjects portrayed, colours and forms of his paintings.

Christian Dotremont, poet, theorist and founder of the Group, continues to seek an expressive mean half-way between art and poetry, until he discovers -- almost by chance -- the logogrammes, texts where the writing prevails on the meaning (he understood the beauty of the signs while watching his writing on papers the wrong way around). He was the editor-in-chief of the Group's magazine, participated in all of CoBrA's main events, and created the “painting-words” series with Jorn in 1948-49.

Carl-Henning Pedersen is a CoBrA theorist and artist. Before the establishment of the Group, he publishes on the review Helhesten the article Abstract Art or imaginary, where he already gives a complete and precise definition of the practical principles for the new generation of painters that he belongs to. This definition is not far from the future programme of CoBrA Group. In his works, Pedersen lets the Nordic tradition emerge by painting castles, kings, princesses, suitors and animals that look like they have come out of a legend through a dream, as in his masterpiece Frieren (der Verehrer). He also drew the cover of the first issue of the Cobra review.