Corneille (Dutch, b. 1922) and Hugo Claus (Belgian, b. 1929)

Cobra was a unique movement within international expressionism. Never before had artists from different countries joined together in such a tightly-knit organisation, to work for three years on the implimentation of their social ideals, even though it was in their own limited circle. Important sources of inspriration were 'outsider art' like primitive non-western art, drawings of children and mentally deranged.

The present lot is one of the rare preserved examples of a so-called Gesamtkunstwerk from Cobra artists, also known as collective work number 9 in the former collection of Karel van Stuyvenberg. In the Cobra movement the ideal that everybody was free to contribute, was of fundamental importance. The Cobra congres in 1948 in Bregneröd near Copenhagen might be regarded as a climax of the movement. Here the artists lived and worked together, made paintings, poems and sculptures.