Catalogue of the exhibition at the Soulages Museum in Rodez from November 16, 2021 to May 8, 2022.
Chaissac and CoBrA. Under the sign of the snake.
Gallimard
Regular price
€32,00
| N° d'inventaire | 25250 |
| Format | 21 x 28 |
| Détails | 207 p., publisher's hardcover. |
| Publication | Paris, 2022 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782072958687 |
Although they never met, the artists of the CoBrA group (active between 1948 and 1951) and the painter Gaston Chaissac (1910-1964) shared a common creative vision. Rejecting knowledge and apprenticeship, they favored an art based on imagination and spontaneity.
While the former bear witness to the vitality of the Nordic scene, from which they originate – the name CoBrA taking the first letters of the cities where the group's members reside (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) – it is nevertheless in the French capital that many of them will establish themselves and become known. Their formal and chromatic audacity, through references to primitive art or children's drawings, finds an echo in the work of the self-taught outsider Gaston Chaissac. The latter, admired by Jean Dubuffet, was encouraged to draw by the painter Otto Freundlich and developed a highly original body of work, multiplying pictorial experiments with assertive graphics on salvaged materials, as well as a significant body of epistolary and poetic work. In these artists – brought together for the first time – the intensity of colors associated with an instinctive linear energy gives rise to an almost magical expressiveness, where the serpentine form often takes pride of place.
While the former bear witness to the vitality of the Nordic scene, from which they originate – the name CoBrA taking the first letters of the cities where the group's members reside (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) – it is nevertheless in the French capital that many of them will establish themselves and become known. Their formal and chromatic audacity, through references to primitive art or children's drawings, finds an echo in the work of the self-taught outsider Gaston Chaissac. The latter, admired by Jean Dubuffet, was encouraged to draw by the painter Otto Freundlich and developed a highly original body of work, multiplying pictorial experiments with assertive graphics on salvaged materials, as well as a significant body of epistolary and poetic work. In these artists – brought together for the first time – the intensity of colors associated with an instinctive linear energy gives rise to an almost magical expressiveness, where the serpentine form often takes pride of place.
While the former bear witness to the vitality of the Nordic scene, from which they originate – the name CoBrA taking the first letters of the cities where the group's members reside (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) – it is nevertheless in the French capital that many of them will establish themselves and become known. Their formal and chromatic audacity, through references to primitive art or children's drawings, finds an echo in the work of the self-taught outsider Gaston Chaissac. The latter, admired by Jean Dubuffet, was encouraged to draw by the painter Otto Freundlich and developed a highly original body of work, multiplying pictorial experiments with assertive graphics on salvaged materials, as well as a significant body of epistolary and poetic work. In these artists – brought together for the first time – the intensity of colors associated with an instinctive linear energy gives rise to an almost magical expressiveness, where the serpentine form often takes pride of place.