Cobra or COBRA

   A twentieth century European art movement whose members included Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Corneille, Egill Jacobsen, Asger Jorn, Lucebert, and Karl H. Pederson, and was founded in Paris in 1948 by the Belgian poet and essayist Christian Dotrement, and active until 1951. Their art was experimental, inspired by Marxism, somewhat sympathetic to Expressionism and Surrealism, showing greatest affinity to folk art and children's art and to the works of Paul Klee and Joan Miró. Similarities can also be seen to works by American abstract expressionists, but none to those that are geometrically abstract. Cobra's name was distilled from the names of the three capital cities of the countries of its principal members: CO from Copenhagen, Denmark, BR from Brussels, Belgium, and A from Amsterdam, The Netherlands.