Pierre Alechinsky is the last active CoBrA artist. He was born in Brussels in 1927 and is still working in his studio just outside Paris today.
Back in the day he was the CoBrA movement’s youngest member (the benjamin) and organiser of the last official CoBrA exhibition in Liège in 1951.
Pierre Alechinsky’s pictorial and graphic work distinguishes itself by its lyrical character and by the liveliness of the brush, in which there are, for example, some clear oriental calligraphy and literature influences.
He found a way to free himself from the slow and sometimes very rigid oil paint on canvas techniques after meeting Walasse Ting in the early 1950s and after his trip to Japan in 1955 – where he made a film about Japanese Calligraphy. This is where Alechinsky discovered India ink’s manageability and transparent fluidity and, at a later stage, acrylic paint on paper too, to which he managed to add a very personal interpretation. The artist literally danced around the paper – which he first crumpled and subsequently placed down on the floor – whilst performing fast and lively brush strokes, mainly using Chinese and Japanese brushes. The paper was then glued to the canvas (marouflage technique). Alechinsky regularly surrounded the central part of his work with border art, which is particularly characteristic of his work from the mid-1960s.
Alechinsky’s working method was also influenced by his close collaborations and exchanges with the Belgian poet and artist Christian Dotremont, one of CoBrA’s founders.
Pierre Alechinsky played a strong cohesive and organisational role within the CoBrA group.
He was also appointed as the technical director of the last “2ième Exposition Internationale d’Art Expérimentale, CoBrA” exhibition, in Palais des Beaux-Art in Liège in 1951. Alechinsky has continued to assume the historical conscience role to this very day since CoBrA’s dissolution in 1951. He ensures a correct art history historiography and interpretation of what Dotremont referred to as a “legend”.
An enormously rich oeuvre has been created over the years, which has now resulted in broad international appreciation for the painter, as well as numerous prizes, including recently becoming the first Belgian to win the “Praemium Impériale” (2018, Tokyo).
Alechinsky’s work is represented in important international private and museum collections. He has enjoyed solo exhibitions in renowned museums, including Le Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (1955), the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris (1975 and 2004), the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1987) and the Koninklijke Musea voor de Schone Kunsten in Brussels (2007).
