The Cobra movement

The Mancoba family went to live in Denmark in 1947, settling in Kattinge. Mancoba and Ferlov exhibited their works at the annual Host (Harvest) exhibition for progressive art in Copenhagen in 1948 and 1949.

They became involved in the radical Cobra group in 1948 together with artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam (the name Cobra is taken from the first letters of these cities) who wanted to create a new kind of art for a new post-war society. The Cobra artists considered their art as a weapon of the spirit, a tool for the construction and transformation of the world; they sought not to be great, but to be useful to society. Founded as a reaction against Surrealism, Cobra strongly influenced artists in the last half of the 20th century, although as a movement, it lasted only a few years.

'It was a precious thing to find some people with whom one could breathe,' Mancoba told Bridget Thompson while being interviewed for a documentary film on his life.

Cobra artists challenged the industrial world's view of art and reaffirmed the instinctive being. Although it was a short lived movement they had a significant impact.

During this time, Mancoba encountered medieval frescos (Kalkmalerei) in rural Danish churches which influenced his painting technique. He was also moved by the strength, simplicity and boldness of Greenlandic folk art from a significant exhibition in Copenhagen at that time and how the Inuit people used bone and whatever was at hand to execute their art and survive in the most hostile of surroundings.

^ top of page