The Masterpieces from World Museums in the Hermitage seriesCoBrA and Contemporaries from Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

On 16 May, 2003, in the recently restored Peter Gallery of the Small Hermitage (Rooms No. 255-257) opened an exhibition organized by the Hermitage together with the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), with the support of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in St. Petersburg. The show is part of the Stedelijk Museum’s international exhibition program The Past of the Present, sponsored by ABN AMRO.

The Stedelijk Museum owns one of the best collection of art of the second half of the 20th century. For the Hermitage exhibition, marking the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, 86 sculptures, paintings and drawings created by artists of the group CoBrA after 1945 have been selected.

The name CoBrA is an acronym of the French names of the capitals of the three countries (Denmark, Belgium and The Netherlands) from which the group’s members came, Co[penhague], Br[uxelles], A[msterdam]. Though as an organized body the group proved short-lived, existing only from 1948 to 1951, it gave an enduring impetus to the post-war European art. All the CoBrA artists shared a remarkably expressive style with an important element of "primitivism" deriving from folk art, fairy tales, myths, primitive art and paintings of children and insane people. "To learn to paint is impossible. Feeling is of utmost importance, the rest is insignificant" (Carl Henning Pedersen). After 1945, the young Dutch and Belgian artists Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Theo Wolvecamp, Constant (Constant A. Nieuwenhuys), Corneille (Cornelis Guillaume van Bewerloo), Lucebert (Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk) and Lotti van der Gaag, whose works are on display in the Hermitage, drawing on the achievements of the great avant-garde masters of the early 20th century, surrealism and abstract expressionism, proclaimed the idea of absolute self-expression, including the representation of subconscious instincts, when in a painting or sculpture the real world is merely alluded to by means of mythological signs or symbols.

The group’s groundbreaking techniques stirred rows at the first CoBrA shows, especially in 1949 at the Stedelijk Museum. The artists’ explanations like "Introverted painting" (Alechinsky), "Psychic automatism" (Piet Ouborg), "Painting is a beast, night, cry, man or all this put together rather than a construction of colors and lines" (Constant) or "I express myself as a barbarian in a barbarian language" (Appel) were rejected. Now such declarations sound much less provocative, and the daring search for new means of expression have become a fact of the history of the previous century’s art.

The full-color illustrated catalogue of the exhibition prepared by Stedelijk Museum has been published by Slaviya.

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The catalogue