Cobra: The Written Image

Partner

Dutch Lithography Museum

Theme

Collective and Conflict

Tags

CoBrA
New Babylon
2026 Cobra in woord en beeld-NL Steendruk Museum
1963 New Babylon 10
New Babylon 10 [1963]
1968 Labyrismen-02
Labyrismen-02 [1968]
1952 Uitzicht van de duif 7
Uitzicht van de duif 7 [1952]
1949 Napoleon van Elba
Photo: Tom Haartsen
1968 Labyrismen-05
1949 Goedemorgen Haan titelpagina
Goedemorgen Haan title page [1949]
1952 Uitzicht van de duif 9
Uitzicht van de duif 9 [1952]

The exhibition CoBrA: The Written Image reveals a new side of CoBrA—one previously unfamiliar to the general public. With its unique focus on collaborations and printmaking, the exhibition presents—for the first time—extraordinary works from institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and the Kunstmuseum Den Haag; pieces that had long remained unseen within their collections. Discover how word and image come together masterfully on the lithographic stone.

Involved partners

Dutch Lithography Museum
1968 Labyrismen-05
Labyrismen-05 [1968]
1963 New Babylon 06
New Babylon 06 [1963]
1949 Goedemorgen Haan p3-4
Goedemorgen Haan p3-4 [1949]
1949 Napoleon van Elba
Photo: Tom Haartsen
1968 Labyrismen-04
1952 Uitzicht van de duif 2
Uitzicht van de duif 2 [1952]
1952 Uitzicht van de duif 5
Uitzicht van de duif 5 [1952]
1968 Labyrismen-07
Labyrismen-07 [1968]

After the Second World War, the international avant-garde movement CoBrA unleashed a true revolution in the art world. This group of visual artists and poets from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark made a radical break with academic conventions, advocating instead for an artistic climate characterized by freedom, spontaneity, and accessibility. Today, we recognize their experimental approach as the quintessential CoBrA style: spontaneous lines, expressive colors, and seemingly childlike figures.

A key aspect of the CoBrA movement was the experimental collaboration between visual artists and the poets known as De Vijftigers (The Fifties Generation). These encounters gave rise to remarkable peintures-mots (word-paintings) and rare collaborative portfolios and booklets, in which text and image merge into a single visual language. Graphic techniques—lithography in particular—played an intriguing role in this process; the lithographic stone provided an ideal surface for these free and spontaneous collaborations. The freedom and immediacy of printmaking fostered works filled with pure, uninhibited expression by key figures such as Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, and Asger Jorn.

Curator: Mijke Tonnon