Cobra – Mit liv | Cobra My Life

In this exhibition, Museum Jorn showed one of the world's largest private Cobra collections. The collection belongs to the businessman, patron and art lover Jens Olesen. The exhibition was the first major Cobra exhibition in the museum's history, and consisted of a total of 156 Cobra works, of which 17 works have never before been exhibited in Denmark.

Jens Olesen's collection is the result of more than 60 years of intense interest in the artists in and around Cobra. The exhibition presented paintings, sculptures and drawings by the key artists in Cobra; the Danes Asger Jorn, Ejler Bille, Egill Jacobsen, Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt, the Dutch Constant, Corneille and Karel Appel and the Belgians Christian Dotremont and Pierre Alechinsky. But more peripheral figures in the Cobra context such as Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and Erik Thommesen, each of whom in their own way later renounced their affiliation with Cobra, were also represented.

In addition to works from the Cobra period itself (1948-51), the exhibition also included works that the artists had created both before and after Cobra.