Curators
Peter Shield, with Roger Malbert
From the museum website
This is the first comprehensive exhibition in the UK of the radical post-war movement of artists and poets known as CoBrA. The name CoBrA comes from the three cities in which the main participants lived: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam.
The exhibition presents over 150 works by 20 artists. These include a major group of paintings and drawings by each of the key figures: Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Constant, Asger Jorn and Carl-Henning Pedersen.
Explosively expressive, with an emphasis on myth and the untutored art of the mentally ill, the CoBrA artists produced imagery teeming with fantastic creatures and exuding intense emotions: rage, joy and humour. The exhibition conveys the energy and subversive power of this influential movement.
Selected by the CoBrA specialist Peter Shield, with Roger Malbert, Senior Curator, National Touring Exhibitions on behalf of the Hayward Gallery and Sune Nordgren, Director of the Baltic, Gateshead.
A National Touring Exhibition organised by the Hayward Gallery for the Arts Council of England. A full colour catalogue, available in the Gallery Shop, accompanies the exhibition.