The leading force in the group was the troika Jorn, Constant and Dotremont. Several meetings took place to discuss, feast, and undertake collective projects, publish magazines, books, and posters. "En la evolución del arte moderno, el período problemático toca a su fin para sucederle un período experimental. Lo que quiere decir que, de la experiencia de que adquiere en estado de desenfreada libertad, se desprenderán las leyes a las que habrá de obedecer la capacidad de creación," writes Constant.³ The first major CoBrA show, held in 1949 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, was called "International Exhibition of Experimental Art."⁴

In 1951 the CoBrA magazine declares the end of the organization. The immediate reason for the collapse of the group was the fact that both Jorn and Dotremont were hospitalized with tuberculosis, caused by malnutrition and physical exhaustion. For the next ten years, very little happened. CoBrA was forgotten. The Danish artists stayed at home, the Dutch likewise, except for Karel Appel, who settled in New York. Corneille and Alechinsky established themselves in Paris, and became active on the French art scene. Only in the early Ë60s was CoBrA "rediscovered." Jorn had an international breakthrough, Alechinsky reached his mature CoBrA style, Appel showed his dramatic gesture painting. Soon some of the Danish artists, like Pedersen and Jacobsen, came out of their self-imposed "exiles." For them, it was a surprise to see their results from 30 years ago finally being appreciated. The resurfacing of the CoBrA imagery took place in the midst of a period dominated by American art, like pop, minimalism, conceptualism. CoBrA represented an alternative of spontaneity, rage (we can refer again to AlechinskyËs Rage maitrisée), violent and poetic fantasy that seemed to be out of place with its time. This voracity of desire is clearly present in the painting Moment érotique [Erotic moment] (1949) by Constant.

Maybe this renaissance of CoBrA more clearly indicates a new start·the wave of new painting which burst all over Europe (and soon in many other countries, including Brazil) in the late Ë70s and early Ë80s. Yet, Alechinsky says, "en 1973, un 1er mai, le grand Jorn disparaît [. . .] Sans Jorn, sans Dotremont, lËéquilibre est rompu [. . .] Aucun survivant, désormais, ne peut prétendre assurer la continuité de CoBrA. Raisonnablement".⁵ In the works by several of the Ë80s generation of German painters, i.e., Baselitz, Penck and Kiefer, references can be seen to CoBrA artists, especially Jorn and Appel. Per Kirkeby clearly builds on Asger Jorn, as do other artists in the Nordic countries.

CoBrA had several ambitions. None of them were successful. The artistic program of the Danish founders of CoBrA was to promote a spontaneous approach to painting, and a pictorial language characterized by figurations not referring to the "real" world, but coming out of the artistËs fantasy, reminiscent of organic forms, birds, animals, and mask figures. This new abstract expressionism was fed on impulses from cubism, surrealism, Munch, and primitive art, among other sources. As early as 1935, Egill Jacobsen developed a typical CoBrA cross-cultural language, the "mask painting." This pictorial language of the mask, which relied on PicassoËs use of African references and surrealist "automatic drawing," conveys different experiences and states of mind. During wartime, the paintings by Jacobsen and Pedersen reflect their fear and depression, but also home, exalted optimism, lust, joy of life and erotic encounters. The Danish artists looked at "primitive" art, African and Oceanic, as a means to communicate geographic and cultural boundaries. They did not take much interest in its religious or ritual meaning. Instead they looked to artists like Picasso, Miró and Klee·how they appropriated the visual idioms of African and Oceanic traditional art.