Cobra @ Beaux-Arts

Created in Paris in November 1948 by artists coming from Copenhague (Jorn), Brussels (Dotremont, Noiret) and Amsterdam (Appel, Corneille, Constant), the CoBrA movement remains unknown out of Europe.

Sometimes considered as a tail of Surrealist comet, sometimes as a Nordic expression of the tachiste or informal art, Cobra is also considered as an European formula of the abstract Expressionism as it was then blowing in the United States. The project firstly aims at relating the story of the Cobra movement by putting it in its historical and cultural context. After the Liberation and during the Cold War Cobra wanted to explore other paths which we now could call libertarian or alternative. Therefore the action of Cobra is worth to be enhanced in a perspective that will lead some of the artist to the Situationism and Fluxus.