CoBrA and post-war experiments
After the war Cobra painted like children, Expo 58 showed the future, and Broodthaers turned art itself into a question.
After the liberation in 1945, young artists wanted to start again from scratch. The war had shown where reason and order could lead, and they looked instead for spontaneity, play and imagination. In 1948 Danish, Belgian and Dutch artists formed the group Cobra, named after Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. Karel Appel, Constant and Corneille painted in strong colours with childlike figures. The group lasted only three years, but it became one of the most important European art movements of the postwar period. Its pictures provoked both laughter and anger.
Under Willem Sandberg, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam became one of the world’s most open museums for contemporary art, and Sweden’s Moderna Museet worked closely with it. In Belgium the Expo 58 world’s fair in Brussels displayed an optimistic faith in technology and progress, with the Atomium as its symbol. The 1960s brought the Nul group, kinetic art and Pop Art. Artists wanted to eliminate the personal and work with light, movement and repetition. Many of these artists collaborated across borders, especially with the German Zero group.
Towards the end of the 1960s art became increasingly a matter of ideas. The Belgian Marcel Broodthaers made exhibitions about the museum itself, and Dutch conceptual artists such as Jan Dibbets and Stanley Brouwn worked with photography, maps and walks. Bas Jan Ader made poetic works about falling and disappearing. At the same time Dutch architects such as Aldo van Eyck built for people rather than machines. Art and society were debated openly as never before. In these years Dutch arts policy was one of the most generous in the world.