CoBrA

CoBrA was an avant-garde group formed in 1948 by artists from Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, its name composed of the first letters of these three cities. The group's style was intensely expressive and drew inspiration from children's drawing, folk and primitive art, and the unconscious. It was founded, among others, by the Dane Asger Jorn, the Belgian poet Christian Dotremont, and the Dutch artists Karel Appel, Constant, and Corneille; they rebelled against both geometric abstraction and Surrealist intellectualism, championing spontaneity, freedom of gesture, and the immediacy of the creative impulse. Their canvases were populated by bright, grotesque, phantom-like creatures painted in thick, exuberant strokes of saturated colour. CoBrA published a journal of the same name and mounted several major international exhibitions, notably in Amsterdam and Liège. Although the group lasted only until 1951, it became one of the most important post-war European movements and significantly influenced the development of lyrical abstraction and Neo-Expressionism.