CAPA and its legacies. A "CoBrA Modification" and the Danish "Linien" group

It is difficult to find collaborative paintings on CoBra's legacy but sometimes we have enough luck to discover great masterpieces hidden, wrongly catalogated or cataloged in so many ways that definitely makes research and revisionism more interesting. Like the painting that we are going to talk next and that the Dutch art historian Willemijn Stokvis has cataloged as a "Cobra Modification", a painting with no title, but whose elaboration rise as a strong testimony of a "modified" painting inside the CoBrA group; an idea that Capa (Knistoff branch) has been developing since its beginning giving it a huge importance during the Capa creation process, the idea of the never-ending painting. It is well known, that CoBrA was a huge collective of artists and writers that was not limited to Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam but it transcended its limits sharing with artists and writers from other parts of Europe, like, France (Jean-Michel Atlan, Jacques Doucet), England (Stephen Gilert, William Gear), Germany (Karl Otto Götz), Sweden (Carl Otto Hultén, Anders Österlin, Max Walter Svanber) and Iceland (Svavar Gudnason), among other countries and artists that probably still remain in the shadows... When we talk about CoBrA, immediately comes to mind, the members of the Netherlands, like Karel Appel, Corneille, Constant, Anton Rooskens, Theo Wolvecamp, Jan Nieuwenhuys, Eugène Brands, Lucebert and so on, and rarely we talk about the Danish components. Everyone knows that the strongest pillar was Asger Jorn but also participated in CoBrA activities and actively: Carl-Henning Pedersen, Egill Jacobsen, Ejler Bille, Henry Heerup, Else Alfelt, Erik Nyholm, Sonja Ferlov, Erik Thomemesen, Erik Ortvad, Mogens Balle and the most important one of this little story, Richard Mortensen, who was responsable for sending this "unfinished" abstract painting to the CoBrA friends of Amsterdam via Asger Jorn and to modify it. Thanks to Willemijn Stokvis, we also know that this painting it is an oil on canvas of 1949 (size 42.5 x 62.2 cm. Now owned by the Erik Nyholm Collection) which was later modified by Erik Nyholm, Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, Constant, and Corneille, being a missing link of the only known "Cobra Modification". Even though we have more "collaborative work" testimonies, like the collective work done in Bregneröd (near Copenhague), the same house of Erik Nyholm (near Silkeborg), "One of these days" (a unique litography done in Malmö by CoBrA components of Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands) and, some other puntual colaborations in book ilustrations (something very common in the field of collaborative arts between writers and artists) where one of the more important components of CoBrA was Christian Dotremont with a vibrant calligraphic style (from this kind of production, we can highlight the collaborations together Jean-Michel Atlan, Corneille, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky) but none of these resemble the importance of a painting made as a collective modification; being Richard Mortensen a link of special interest to CoBrA. We know that Richard Mortensen (1910-1993), certainly became one of Cobra's main references due to his progressive vision of experimental art as well as for his long experience as one of the founders of the Danish school of abstract and symbolism painting "Linien" (1930-1952).

 

Jorn, Appel, Constant, Corneille, and Erik Nyholm painted this Cobra Modification over a Richard Mortensen oil painting in 1949. Size, 42,5 x 62,2 cm.

 

Now, beyond Richard Mortensen, there were other very important components around the "Linien" group (founded in the 1930s in Copenhagen), such as Egill Jacobsen and Ejler Bille who in 1934 stated that Linien should go further its limits, go beyond Surrealism (at that time seemed to dominate the international artistic circuit) and go beyond, beyond its imaginary and the topic of the dreams to find and give free rein to expression. They proposed abandoning this oppressive model and looking at other models such as German expressionism, but at the same time, going beyond the same one that according to Egill Jacobsen had been locked in a naturalistic vision. To do this, the new model had to follow the freedom and liberation of the expression, seeking the fantasy of expression in order to find an authentically human art, a kind of spontaneous abstract-expressionism. However, and although Ejler Bille was the first to reveal himself, soon other Linien artists followed him in their ideas. This disclosure is attached to other Danish and non-Danish artists that today are linked to CoBrA (the majority of the list being announced above). The most interesting of all this is that at the core of this split appeared from the mists, the figure of a young Danish artist named Asger Jörgensen (1914-1973), who soon adopted the world-famous alias of Asger Jorn in 1945 and, who soon over time came to play a predominant role among his peers in "Linien", first as a participant in the Höst group and then as editor and founder of the magazine "Helhesten" (magazine of the Danish experimentalist artists, between March 1941 and 1944) to finally be one of the pillars of the CoBrA Movement. In this sense, we can assert that the origin of CoBrA laid the anchor on the foundations given by critical thought in "Linien" and in its eagerness to recover the expressive component in the development of the visual arts, being the recipe for German expressionism and existentialism, other foundations on which CoBrA anchored its concerns.

 

Linien exhibition in Tokanten 1947. Photo Richard Winther

Linien exhibition at Lund University, Sweden 1950

Henrik Buch, ”Bamse” Krag Jacobsen, Albert Mertz, Kujahn Blask, and Ib Geertsen. Linien at Den Frie Exhibition Hall, 1948.

Transformations in Surrealism, towards automatism / abstract expressionism, Édouard Jaguer and the Phases magazine

The Jaguer's (Édouard & Simone) were absolutely committed with the dissemination of the poetry and visual arts of the last international European avant-gardes. Édouard Jaguer (1924-2006) was a great poet and essayist-critic and his articles on artists from very diverse and remote places were published in several books and magazines such Terzo Occhio, La Main à la Plume, La Revolution la Nuit, Le Surréalisme Révolutionnaire, Rixes, CoBrA, Boa, Il Gesto, Salamandre, La tortue-lièvre, La Brèche, Aujourdh'hui, XXième Siècle, Ellébore, Les Deux Soeurs, La Tour de Feu, La Nef, as well as in the Phases magazine itself (from its first number in 1954). Likewise, the artistic (graphic design) and curatorial direction (documentary ordering) of this great magazine was completely made by himself. We also know that the magazine was self-financed thanks to a greates curatorship that in special issues included original work by the artists presented under the auspices of the magazine. These original works, as a rule, were in small format (usually signed engravings). However, it mus be said that Phases was not only a magazine. It was a new Movement. A new Movement that started in 1952 which sought to unify the visual culture of its time, the most historical Surrealism ideas and aesthechics with the "new" branches of the "lyrical abstraction" that Andre Breton always considered as the true forms of automatism and that Breton work together with the french critic Charles Estienne in its development. The early fifties is one of the most interesting moments of the Surrealism history due to the battle of its supresion in the History of Art or rememorance, great personalities of this time and its problematics can be found in the french critics Charles Estienne and Michel Tapié. Anyway, Phases standed up in the middle of this epic battle to reunite both movements and artistic tendencies under one voice, the voice of the Experimental Arts. Phases continued its activities until Jaguer died in 2006 leaving a vast catalogue of artists encounteers and ideas that today we continue researching. 

Édouard Jaguer was a link, for all artists linked to the historical Surrealism and historical Experimentalists in favor of the avant-garde and the progress of contemporary art of that time. The Jaguers invested everything they had in their task of advancing this movement. Jaguer had a business that made belt buckles. Also, he operated as an active art merchant and had a very good relationship with various galleries around europe and France. One of these is the parisian gallery "1900-2000" which still remains under the greatest curator Marcel Fleiss. Édouard Jaguer, from a young idealist and fighter, also participated with a group of French Resistance against Nazism and the invasion of France. About Simone, we know that she was a skilled collagist who, in anonymity, signed her works under the pseudonym Anne Ethuin and to preserve the Dada wisdom.

All in all, this picture it is an unpublish faithful testimony of this activity. Here we can see Freddy Flores Knistoff (founder of CAPA) presenting a series of works of his authorship to Édouard and Simone Jaguer. Édouard Jaguer was a great fan of CAPA's work (Knistoff branch), a pity that they did not manage to develop the exhibition project that was beginning to take shape in their minds due to his early death. This photo was taken in 2000 by a friend of Freddy and on the background we can see a large collection of paintings from greatest artists liked to the Surrealism and Experimental Art history, like Enrico Baj, Pierre Alechinsky, Toyen and Cristian D'Orgeix.

 Freddy Flores Knistoff at Jaguer's Studio in París. From left to right, Édouard Jaguer, Freddy Flores Knistoff and Simone Jaguer in 2000.