CoBrA Reykjavík

This exhibition travelled to Trondheim, Norway after.

The National Gallery of Iceland’s contribution to Reykjavík Art Festival 2007 is the exhibition Cobra Reykjavík (10.5.-8.7.2007). It is specially organised for the National Gallery of Iceland and the Art Centre SilkeborgBad of Denmark, backed by sponsors from Iceland and other countries.

Next year will mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Cobra, an international artists’ movement that provided an important and innovative forum for abstract art. The exhibition will give a special focus to contact between Danish and Icelandic artists from this time. It will feature works loaned by leading Nordic art museums, by artists including Asger Jorn, Egill Jacobsen, Ejler Bille, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Svavar Guðnason, Else Alfelt, Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille and Pierre Alechinsky. Curator is Per Hovdenakk.

Cobra was often written CoBRA, representing the first letters of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam; most of the movement’s main representatives were Danish, Belgian and Dutch. Their expressionist abstract art was regarded as one of Europe’s main answers to American abstract expressionism. Although the movement was short-lived, it had an immeasurable influence and the works of its participants continue to inspire wonder and admiration today, such as Constant’s model city, The New Babylon, when it was exhibited at Documenta X in Kassel in 1997.

Curator is Per Hovdenakk.
Assistant Curators are Harpa Þórsdóttir, Iben From, Lars Olsen.

Artists:
Alechinsky, Pierre (f. 1927), Alfelt, Else (1910-1974), Appel, Karel (1921-2006),
Atlan, Jean-Michel (1913-1960), Balle, Mogens (1921-1988), Bille, Ejler (1910-2004),
Brands, Eugène (1913-2002), Constant (1920-2005), Corneille (f. 1922), Dotremont, Christian (1924-1979), Doucet, Jacques (1924-1994), Ferlov Mancoba, Sonja (1911-1984), Gear, William (1915-1997), Gilbert, Stephen (1910-2007), Götz, Karl Otto (f. 1914), Heerup, Henry (1907-1993), Jacobsen, Egill (1910-1998), Jorn, Asger (1914-1973), Kemeny, Madeleine (1924-1993), Kemeny, Zoltan (1907-1965), Lucebert (1924-1994), Mancoba, Ernest (1904-2002), Ortvad, Erik (f.1917), Pedersen, Carl-Henning (1913-2007), Svanberg, Max Walter (1912-1994), Svavar Guðnason (1909-1988), Thommesen, Erik (f. 1916), Wolvecamp, Theo (1925-1992), Österlin, Anders (f. 1926)