CoBrA colour
Childlike forms and imaginary animals in strident colour.
G.Lanting โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Johan Bakker โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท G.Lanting โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท G.Lanting โ CC BY-SA 3.0
An acronym of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, and a short-lived European art movement (1948-51) of great influence. It arose immediately after the war from a conviction that high European culture had failed and produced fascism, so its artists looked elsewhere for sources: children's drawings, folk art, Norse myth and spontaneity. The result is painting that looks deliberately primitive โ and it is among the most important Dutch, Belgian and Danish contributions to twentieth-century art.
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The Stedelijk Museum Schiedam occupies the former St Jacob's hospital of 1787, a classical building with a quiet inner courtyard, fifteen minutes by metro from central Rotterdam. Its specialism is clear and unusual: Dutch art after the Second World War, and the CoBrA movement in particular โ the grouping of artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam formed in 1948, which rejected both cold abstraction and realism, painting in strident colour with childlike forms and imaginary animals. Its names: Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille. The collection is among the strongest displays of the movement in the Netherlands, complemented by more recent contemporary art. The building itself โ white corridors, top light and a courtyard โ sets off this noisy art by striking contrast. Schiedam rewards combining the visit with its windmills, the tallest in the world.
Childlike forms and imaginary animals in strident colour.
Classical quiet against the noise of the paintings.
Hoogstraat 112, 3111 Schiedam