CoBrA is one of the most important artist groups of Art Informel. The name is derived from the first letters of the three capital cities of Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam - the centers from which the CoBrA artists took action. Little is still known here in Germany about the concrete origins of the art movement. The exhibition and catalogue of the same name attempts a broad examination of the group's origins: with the focus on the reconstruction of the movement prior to its official establishment in November 1948. It aims to present a representative cross-section of the movement that includes the largest possible number of artists as well as the greatest possible concentration of forms of expression and topics characteristic of the movement. Roughly fifty paintings, thirty sculptural works, fifty graphic reproductions and photographs as well as individual ceramics and textiles from international collections are presented.

Denton Welch (1915-48) died at the age of thirty-three after a brief but brilliant career as a writer and painter. The revealing, poignant, impressionistic voice that buoys his novels was much praised by critics and literati in England and has since inspired creative artists from William S. Burroughs to John Waters. His achievements were all the more remarkable because he suffered from debilitating spinal and pelvic injuries incurred in a bicycle accident at age eighteen. Though German bombs were ravaging Britain, Welch wrote in his published work about the idyllic landscapes and local people he observed in Kent. There, in 1943, he met and fell in love with Eric Oliver, a handsome, intelligent, but rather insecure "landboy"--an agricultural worker with the wartime Land Army. Oliver would become a companion, comrade, lover, and caretaker during the last six years of Welch's life. All fifty-one letters that Welch wrote to Oliver are collected and annotated here for the first time. They offer a historical record of life amidst the hardship, deprivation, and fear of World War II, and also are a timeless testament of one young man's tender and intimate emotions, his immense courage in adversity, and his continual struggle for love and creative existence.