Pierre Alechinsky was one of the Belgian pioneers of the Cobra movement, a group of artists with members from Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands that was active from 1948 to 1951. They attempted to combine abstract and figurative as an alternative to the geometric abstraction seen in Europe. The artists endeavoured to achieve the freest possible expression, taking inspiration from, among other things, the drawings and paintings of children and the mentally ill, which they considered to be the peak of spontaneous creation.
