Pedersen & Lucebert – Two faces of CoBrA

With the exhibition Carl-Henning Pedersen & Lucebert – Two Faces of CoBrA, DIE GALERIE is dedicating itself to two artists from the CoBrA group whose artistic origins can be found in poetry. Carl-Henning Pedersen (1913–2007) wrote poems about his first wife, the painter Else Alfelt, and through this discovered painting as a self-taught artist. In 1949, the two artists met at the first exhibition of the CoBrA group in Amsterdam. Lucebert (1924–1994) was represented there with an illustrated poem. He also taught himself to paint and processed his experiences of the Second World War in his works in the form of grotesque, ironically appearing animal-human figures and ghostly grimaces. Pedersen seems unaffected by the theme; his works have a positive aura, life-affirming and colorful. In them, mythical creatures cheerfully recount the mythology of the North. DIE GALERIE is showing both artists together for the first time. The meeting is imaginary in that although the two knew each other, they never engaged in dialogue. For despite all the similarities in their abstract-figurative, poetic-narrative formal language, their characters differ fundamentally: while Lucebert seeks answers to life’s questions in existentialism, Pedersen turns to the forces of mythology.