Cobra, the European avant-garde art movement, was founded on the 8th of November 1948 at the Café Notre-Dame in Paris by Christian Dotremont and his friends, Belgium poet Joseph Noiret, the Danish painter Asger Jorn and Dutch painters Karel Appel, Constant, and Corneille. They signed the manifesto, "La cause était entendue" written by Dotremont. An acronym for their home cities Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, Cobra aimed to strike out against all traditional conventions in art. Quicky, the group was joined by Alechinsky, Atlan, Heerup, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Hugo Claus, Pol Bury and Doucet.
An open invitation was extended to experimental artists, writers, sculptors, movie makers, and photographers the world over.
" The only road we see open for continuing our international activity is through an organic, experimental collaboration which avoids all sterile and dogmatic theory...."
-Christian Dotremont, November 8 1948, Paris.
Below are three Lefebre Gallery catalogues containing essays on Cobra.
Cobra
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| ![Cobra](http://d3zr9vspdnjxi.cloudfront.net/artistInfo/lefebreg/biggest/870.jpg?1440800999 "Catalogue for the Lefebre Gallery exhibition, "Cobra 1960".")
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