COBRA - Art moving in mysterious ways
It was a beautiful evening in the streets of Paris, some 60 years ago, when a group of friends gathered at Café Notre Dame and had a lively discussion about their shared passion - art. Before the night was over and the last drinks were finished, Danish painter Asger Jorn, Belgian poet and painter Christian Dotremont, and Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, had planted the seed of what would become a new movement, and one that would make an immense difference to the international world of art.
They named the movement COBRA by using the first letters of the various capital cities from where the artists’ originated: (CO)penhagen (BR)ussels and (A)msterdam. The movement is now considered to be one of the most significant art directions of the 20th century. This year COBRA celebrates its 60th anniversary with a number of exhibitions taking place around the world.
From the very beginning, the vision of COBRA was to look for uncorrupted expressions from history, starting with primitive man. The first humans managed to express themselves with only a few signs and drawings as seen through cave art around the world. The COBRA movement closely studied this primal need for artistic expression and focused especially on the use of African and Indonesian tribal masks in primitive ceremonies. The masks were not used for hiding faces but as a way of conveying emotions and moods. COBRA has also taken great inspiration from children’s drawings, supernatural creatures, dreams, myths and fables and even from how insane people express themselves through art.
When it was created in 1948, we can suppose that the group took their pleasure from a shared fairytale world as a response to the misery inflicted by World War II. During the war, art in Europe was restricted in many ways with Hitler dictating a preference for landscape and figurative art forms. The only other alternative at the time was surrealism with its focus on nightmares. It must have come as quite a relief for the group of artists to plunge into a childish world of happy colors, although at the time there was some uncertainty as to its merit. Was it art or just childlike work created by adults?
As part of the 60th anniversary celebrations, a substantial auction took place recently at prominent Danish auction house Bruun Rasmussen. It was a great success and several paintings went for much higher prices than expected. The auction realized just under four million euros from a total of 99 works sold.
One family in particularly was extremely happy with the outcome. They had recently moved into to a villa to discover a wall painting by renowned artist Asger Jorn. The painting was done on Jorn’s way home from a party in the early hours of the morning in 1964 as a birthday surprise for the owner of the house, Mr. Robert Dahlmann Olsen.
On realizing who had decorated their wall the family immediately had it removed to protect it from their small children’s sticky fingers, restored, and put up for auction. A good investment considering it sold for about 700,000euros!
Jorn was the front man for COBRA. He was inspired by Fernand Leger among others, and became an important figure in the history of Danish art. In 1937, he drove his motorbike all the way from Denmark to Paris to study with Kandisky only to find he had just turned his back on teaching. Instead, Jorn was fortunate to come under the tutelage of Leger who became one of Jorns early inspirations, as well as one of the great masters himself - Picasso. Other Danish artists inspired by COBRA include Ejler Bille, Egill Jacobsen, Carl Henning Pedersen, Henry Heerup and Else Alfelt.
Jorn spoke on more than one occasion of how COBRA’s strength as a movement seemed to be a shared joy of life in all its aspects, both in what is considered beautiful as the norm and especially what is not!
Asger Jorn passed away in 1973 but his legacy lives on and he now has a gallery dedicated to him at the Louisiana museum for modern art located in the city of Humlebæk just north of Copenhagen. This was only made possible by the generous donations from private collectors throughout the world and exhibits from preeminent modern museums of art like the MoMA in New York. and the COBRA Museum in Amsterdam.
COBRA strikes back this year and reminds us of an epoch in Danish art history that continues to have followers around the globe, be they collectors or modern art practitioners. Be ready to explore the wonders of COBRA – art moving in mysterious ways.
May 2008