Background Image

Art movements

Pic Image Image Image

COBRA

1948-1952

Cobra (CO-penhagen, BR-ussels, A-msterdam), created in 1948, came into existence in the wake of the work of Jorn and Dotremont. Soon a manifesto entitled “La Cause était entendue”, The Case Was Heard, was made public. Many artists joined in. Their commonality of views was apparent in the organ of the movement subtitled « Lien souple des groupes expérimentaux.» After being initially preoccupied with political issues, these artists gradually gave free rein to their imagination and their sense of poetry. They refused materialism and took their inspiration in particular from children’s drawings, the artistic expressions of mentally handicapped people and primitive art. They searched for meaning that lay behind the shape of things and found in their own experience the foundation of an essential truth present in everyone and therefore universal. Painting and writing being expressions of a similar essential gesture, these activities are connected. Thus Cobra encouraged exchange, encounters, collaborative work. It foreshadowed the protest movements of the 1960’s.
Pic

XXth century art movements

chronology

Pic