Cobra

Name: CoBrA

Lifespan: November 8, 1948-1951

Nationality: European

Genre: Avantgarde

Exhibitions: COBRA Museum (Netherlands), Museum Jorn (Silkeborg)

Well-known works: The Eating (Carl-Henning Pedersen 1939), The Little Things (Asger Jorn 1940), The Grasshopper (Egill Jacobsen 1941) Some of the most popular can be seen at Kunsten.

CoBrA, which stands for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, was a European avant-garde movement between 1949 and 1951. The letters are the initials of the members' hometowns. At the Hotel Notre Dames Café in Paris, 6 members (Christian Dotremont, Joseph Noiret, Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, Constant Niuwenhuys and Corneille) signed a declaration concerning the Danish group, Høst, the Dutch group, Reflex, and the Belgian Revolutionary Surrealistic Group. Another important member to mention is Pierre Alechinsky. The political movement later spread to other countries (e.g. France, Sweden and Scotland) and already within a year they had over 50 members from 10 different countries. Some of the Danish members were: Asger Jorn, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Egill Jacobsen, Henry Heerup and Mogens Balle.

Cobra wanted to create a new era after World War II with a focus on artistic creativity and surrealism at a time when naturalistic and realistic imagery flourished. It was the unconscious emotions that the artists would strike on people with inspiration from children's drawings, Nordic mythology, African masks and the art of the mentally ill, as well as Paul Klee and Joan Miró. Their sources of inspiration were chosen because of their distancing from the norms of modern society. With such different sources of inspiration, there was not a fixed style but a strong community that led to many works created together by different painters and poets. Art should be understood by all and was based on an abstract expressive style and idiom governed by the imagination. COBRA also had a magazine of the same name with Dotremont as editor-in-chief and with the first issue published in Copenhagen in March 1949.

Today, the political side of the movement does not take up much space in relation to art. Asger Jorn, however, strived to keep the political alive and therefore established the international artist movements, Bauhaus Imaginiste and Internationale Situationniste, in 1957. In addition to himself, the members included the provocative artist Jens Jørgen Thorsen and Jorn's brother Jørgen Nash.

In 1995, a museum opened in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, focusing on works by the many Cobra artists. Despite its short lifespan, the CoBrA movement is still a major source of inspiration for many artists today and is considered one of the most important art movements after World War II.