CoBrA paintings
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
October 29, 1998 - February 14, 1999
Out of the devastation of World War II, a drive towards liberated subjectivity in the figurative styles of Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon influenced American and European art. In 1948, European artists Karel Appel, Cornelis van Beverloo (known as Corneille), and George Constant established the "Experimental Group," seeking new forms of elemental expression. Through contacts with similar northern European groups, this movement evolved into the international expressionist group CoBrA.
The CoBrA Group - comprised of artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam - existed for only a few years, from 1948 to 1950, but some of the artists who become known through the group continued to achieve international acclaim. These included Appel, Corneille, Constant, Asger Jorn, Constant A. Nieuwenhuys and Pierre Alechinsky. Their unifying stylistic bond was a free, organic expressiveness in paint handling and an emphasis on imagery defined in the individual imagination.
Over the three years of its existence, the founding members and their collaborators produced ten issues of a journal entitled CoBrA and numerous exhibitions. Their efforts instigated artistic exchanges that aimed to provide organization to the loose affiliation of northern European artists.
CoBrA artists had roots in surrealist automatism, Freudian psychology and existentialism. With the French artist Dubuffet, whom CoBrA members knew and admired, they also shared an interest in anonymous, untutored art and in the everyday experience of the common man.
The exhibition celebrates the 1958 founding of the Fellows, which was organized originally as a support group to assist the museum's collecting efforts.
Dozens of important works of art have been purchased for the collection by the Fellows Fund, including works by Carl-Henning Pedersen, Alfred Jensen, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Philip Pearlstein, John Sloan, Anselm Keifer and Andy Warhol. These works are on display as part of the exhibition.
CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART
4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
