CoBrA was an art movement that was named for the cities it originated in: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. 

After the horrors of World War II, a group of northern Europeans banded together to promote their vision of art with a series of exhibits, publications, and collaborations.  As a movement they existed for a few years in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

CoBrA favored expressionist painting techniques, spontaneity and experimentation. Inspired by the art of children, primitives, and the insane, they sought a kind of populism where art was made by and for everyone.

While their methods may leave their art crude and unresolved, their sense of art as a universal form of communication runs counter to the ever-present elitist tendencies that marginalize art in mass culture.

“Creation and revolutionary struggle have the same objective: the realization of life.” – Constant