Color lithograph by Beverloo Corneille from 2003. Signed and numbered in pencil by the artist. Some spots on the passepartout, but the lithograph is in mint condition. (free Shipping - but unfortunately I can't ship to Switzerland) On 8 November 1948, in a café on the corner of the rue Saint-Jacques in Paris, a group of artists including Constant Nieuwenhuijs, Karel Appel and Corneille — all members of the Dutch Experimentele Groep — met with their Danish counterpart Asger Jorn. Guided by the Belgian painter and poet Christian Dotremont, they wrote and signed their first manifesto, The Case Was Heard. Dotremont would later recall the founding principles that had, in that moment, united them: ‘Creation before theory; that art must have roots; materialism which begins with the material; the mark as a sign of wellbeing, spontaneity, experimentation: it was the simultaneity of these elements which created CoBrA.’ Dotrement is credited with originating the group’s moniker, which was derived from its members’ home cities: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. Seeking to distance themselves from the theoretical in-fighting of Paris, the original CoBrA members founded a collaborative network that stretched across northern European, including Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, which had only recently been liberated from Nazi rule. They were as much opposed to the hard geometry of Piet Mondrian and de Stijl as they were to the Academy, seeking to break from the rigid forms and restricted palettes that then dominated the avant-garde scene. Inspired in part by Surrealist automatism, the CoBrA artists made exuberant, interdisciplinary pieces. They did not turn to museums or galleries for inspiration; rather, they looked to ancient Nordic myths, children’s drawings and primitivism — all of which came together in what became known as the ‘language of CoBrA’. For Jorn and his colleagues, these sources brought a profound and refreshing sense of renewal. Cobra members. Constant, Eugène Brands, Tony Appel, Anton Rooskens, Karel Appel, Jacques Doucet, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Theo Wolvecamp, Lucebert and Jan Elburg, Asger Jorn