Exhibited: “Cobra”, Didrichsens Konstmuseum, Helsingfors, Finland, 25 September - 21 October 1979, cat. no. 14. Provenance: Herbert von Garvens Garvensburg, Bornholm. Acquired directly from the artist. Provenance: Sam Kaner (Court Gallery), Copenhagen. Provenance: Galerie Nova Spectra, The Hague, The Netherlands. Provenance: Galerie Bork, Copenhagen. Provenance: Kunsthallen Kunstauktioner, auction 422, Copenhagen, 1992, cat. no. 159, ill. p. 47 in the catalogue. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark. Acquired from the above by the current owner.

In 1946, the Dutch artist Constant (Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys) was sojourned in Paris, where, one fateful autumn evening, he met Asger Jorn at Pierre Loeb’s gallery on Rue de Seine. The two like-minded artists became friends, discussed ideas and theories, and agreed on the need to form an international experimental group as the raison d’être of art was to be found in the experimental. So, in November 1948, CoBrA was founded. By the following year, serious problems were already afoot within the newly founded community, as Jorn and Constant’s wife, Matie von Domselaer, had fallen in love and started a relationship. Before the divorces and quarrels, however, Constant had been uplifted by his meeting with Jorn. He had an undaunted belief in a better and more peaceful world, and fantastic creatures began to emerge in his works: “A painting is not a mixture of colours and lines but an animal, a night, a scream, a human, or all that in one.” Together with Dotremont, Constant constituted the group’s theoretical foundation and intellectual power. For him, the creative process was more important than the creation itself, and in the period from 1956–1974, he largely abandoned painting in favour of architecture and urban planning through the long-standing, utopian “New Babylon” project, in which he sought to visualise the society of the future. In the preceding years, however, he was highly productive, and his works from the CoBrA period are charged with a potent energy. He was fascinated by the uninhibited, unschooled approach of children to art and was at the same time inspired by the artistic creations of other cultures. Real – as well as imagined – animals often appear in Constant’s works. He was a frequent visitor to Amsterdam Zoo, and kept a menagerie of dogs, cats, an iguana and even a baboon as pets. The mask here is a warrior’s mask but inspired by the colouring of the baboon. The eyes are accentuated, the nostrils flared, and the teeth bared; pent-up savagery surging towards us. Glowing red and luminous blue stand in contrast to the yellow mask, the staring gaze of which looks directly at the viewer and etches itself onto the retina. Simple geometric shapes, circles and lines, build a quivering unease, emphasised by the spontaneous strokes of the brush, white dots and red lines, all set against a midnight black background.