149 - [MAGAZINE].

[MAGAZINE]. Cobra. Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hanover, Liège, 1949–1951. — 8 issues, quarto size, stapled. Complete collection of this art magazine published by the CoBrA group, an art movement founded in Paris in 1948 by the poets Christian Dotremont and Joseph Noiret and the painters Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, and Asger Jorn in response to the controversy between abstraction and figuration. The combined issue 8/9 was never published. The first issue appeared in Copenhagen in March 1949 and bears the subtitle: “Bulletin for the Coordination of Artistic Investigations. A flexible link between the Danish (Høst), Belgian (revolutionary surrealism), and Dutch (Reflex) experimental groups.” ” Published after the Høst exhibition, it features, notably, a collaborative lithograph by Egill Jacobsen, Asger Jorn, and Carl-Henning Pedersen on the cover, as well as four color lithographs by Bille, Jacobsen, Jorn, and Pedersen. The second issue was published in Brussels on March 21, 1949. It features a cover by Pol Bury. Issue 3 also appeared in Brussels a few weeks after the previous one. Featuring a beautiful cover entirely illustrated by Alechinsky, it is entirely devoted to experimental film. Issue 4 was published in Amsterdam and covers, among other topics, the non-pictorialist exhibition in Amsterdam. Enclosed are two typewritten sheets titled: Preliminary Draft of a Journal for Cultural Cooperation between Denmark and Belgium. Light water stains. Issue 5, published in Hanover in 1950, is in oblong in-4 format. It contains a woodcut by Otto Hoffmann and reproductions of works by German artists: Baumeister, Hartung, Hulten, and Tajiri. The Alechinsky lithograph is missing. There is a tear with no loss on the back cover. Issue 6 features a beautiful cover lithographed by Léo Van Roy, as well as four original lithographs by Alechinsky, Pol Bury, Jan Cox, and Louis Van Lint, printed separately from the text. Stains and a few tears on the cover. Issue 7 was published in Belgium in the fall of 1950, featuring on the cover a photograph of an engraved slate by Raoul Ubac. Issue 10 is the magazine’s final issue, published in the fall of 1951. It was published in Liège by the Société des Beaux-Arts and was largely produced by Alechinsky. It features two red inserts in the center containing the catalog for the second international exhibition of experimental art, held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Liège from October 6 to November 6, 1951. Damage at the bottom of the cover and the inserts.