"Sur un coup d'humeur, contre le verbiage, l'hésitation, le centralisme, c'est à Paris, le 8 de novembre 1948, dans un café formant coin du quai Saint-Michel avec l'axe de la rue Saint-Jacques, qu'est signé l'acte fondateur de CoBrA," Pierre Alechinsky writes.¹ The artists were discussing the involvement of Surrealist International with the Communist party. They concluded it led nowhere and undersigned the following resolutions: "We consider the only way out for continued international activity to be an organic and experimental cooperation, which avoids all sterile and dogmatic theories. [. . .] We have seen that we have a common way of life and of working and feeling, we understand each other at the practical level and refuse to subscribe to a theoretical unity which is artificial. [...] It is in a spirit of reciprocity that we add dialectical experience between our groups to our national experiences."

CoBrA was established by Asger Jorn (Denmark), the poet Charles Dotremont, Joseph Noiret (Belgium), Karel Appel, Constant and Corneille (Holland), who were participating in an art d'avantgarde congress in Paris. The denomination-CoBrA-came from the initial letters of the name of the capitals-COpenhagen, BRussels and Amsterdam-of their countries. CoBrA had practically no support from the art establishment. Exceptions were Michel Ragon and Willem Sandberg, director of Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Other Paris critics considered CoBrA to be conservative, because it was not as "abstract" as the "School of Paris." Also the expressionist feature of CoBrA was not appreciated by the Paris establishment, as had been the case with Munch and the German expressionists.

CoBrA is probably the last group of its kind in the tradition of the dadaists, futurists, constructivists and surrealists to rely on cooperation between artists. Asger Jorn started his collaborative work with Pierre Wemaêre in 1940 which lasted until the 1980s. Cooperation among CoBrA artists is a condition of their work, relying on the unlimited respect for the individual and an "épainouissement tout aussi illimité dans la communauté."² CoBrA also cultivated cooperation with scientists, musicians, and film directors.

When artists cooperated in organized groups, it was to promote new artistic ideas, which were not supported by the art establishment. As soon as such support was achieved, often groups were dissolved or degenerated into a form of personal power. This was the case with the Surrealist International which after the war became André Breton's personal power tool. In fact, CoBrA was founded as an alternative to Breton's dictatorship over the Surrealist International. Dotremont, during the occupation of France, had personally kept the flame of surrealism burning. He became a political opponent of Breton, who had narrowed the definition of "true" surrealism and excluded some artists from the group. Breton played the role of the authoritarian father, trying to monopolize the direction of surrealism. In Brussels, just before the creation of CoBrA, Asger Jorn, Dotremont, Eljer Bille, Egill Jacobsen and Carl-Henning Pedersen, among others, had founded the Bureau International du Surréalisme Revolutionnaire with an experimental overture opposed to the canonic character of the surrealism by Breton. There is a clear intention of transgression in the organizations of the group. CoBrA's group fulfills the role of the hoard of children that defy the authority of the father (Breton), as if artistic generations were experiencing the situation of Totem and Taboo, as discussed by Freud. Zero de conduite [Zero conduct] (1961), a painting by Alechinsky, expresses this transgressive drive, while Rage maitrisée [Repressed rage] (1952) of Jorn opts for the possibility of giving a direction to revolt, which is CoBrA.