Pierre Alechinsky
1927
Alechinsky’s long-term quest was to find ways of converting language into images. To that end he tried to capture the visual qualities of texts, in collaboration with writers and other artists. Alechinsky is recognised as the most important representative of the Cobra movement in Belgium.

Karel Appel
1921-2006
What earned Appel his worldwide fame, in particular, was his permanent battle with matter. Today, the fantastic creatures that emerged from this battle are regarded as emblematic of the Cobra movement.

Mogens Balle
1921-1988
The Danish artist Balle mainly used abstract forms and warm colours. There is a sense of movement in his abstractions, which sometimes take on the form of creatures.

Ejler Bille
1910-2004
Bille was an avant-garde personality in the broadest sense, both as a artist and as an activist. He made sculptures as well as paintings and drawings. Bille’s colour combinations, and the soft ‘Nordic’ pastel shades in particular, are always personal and recognisable.

Eugene Brands
1913-2002
Brands was a great fan of jazz and African music, but he did all the travelling to exotic places within the four walls of his own home and in his works. It was Brands who gave the Cobra artists the opportunity to stage an exhibition at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum in 1949.

Hugo Claus
1929-2008
Famous primarily as a writer, Claus also made many splendid visual art works in a style that shows the influence of Cobra. As a painter he visualised memories that he could not capture in words. This work is called "Figure with a rose".

Constant
1920-2005
Constant is regarded as one of the great thinkers, ideologists and philosophers of the Cobra movement. Many of his works are politically charged.

Lotti van der Gaag
1923-1999
Many of Van der Gaag’s sculptures and drawings show the strong influence of the Cobra movement. She was introduced to several of its members by poet and writer Simon Vinkenoog. Van de Gaag shared accommodation in Paris with Corneille and Appel for a long time.

William Gear
1915-1997
An abstract and expressionist painter, Gear was influenced both by artists such as Jackson Pollock and by the Cobra group, who accepted him as one of its members. Gear participated in the important Cobra exhibition at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum in 1949.

Asger Jorn
1914-1973
Jorn was the driving force behind various international art movements, including Cobra. 

Lucebert
1924-1994
Lucebert counts as one of the greatest Dutch poets. It is he who wrote “Alles van waarde is weerloos” (All that is valuable is defenceless), one of the best known lines in Dutch poetry. Lucebert was a highly versatile artist. In terms of his visual art output, museums count him as a member of the Cobra movement. Nearly all major Dutch museums own works by Lucebert.

Anton Rooskens
1906-1976
Rooskens developed a fascination for ethnographic art from Oceania and Africa after visiting an exhibition called Kunst in vrijheid (Art in Freedom). He produced one of the earliest works that would later come to typify the Cobra movement. Rooskens travelled to many parts of the world, including his beloved Africa. That particular trip was rather a disappointment, however, as the continent proved to be different in reality from what he had imagined it to be.

Shinkichi Tajiri
1923-2009
This Japanese-American artist was invited by the Cobra members to join in their Amsterdam exhibition in 1949 and has been considered part of the group ever since.

Theo Wolvecamp
1925-1992
Works by Wolvecamp constitute the core of the Ambassade Hotel collection. Wolvecamp was known as the “silent force behind the Cobra movement”.

George Hendrik Breitner
1857-1923
Like no other artist of his generation, Breitner succeeded in capturing life in Amsterdam around 1900 in photographs, paintings and drawings. People, buildings, construction work, nightlife – his scope covered the full spectrum of city life.

Isaac Israëls
1865-1934
Isaac Israëls was predominantly a painter of people, on a never-ending quest to capture the essence of things, such as a certain movement. He would make dozens of preliminary studies of a subject that fascinated him. The main ingredients of his works are women – dancing, sleeping and nude women in particular, but also fashion models and well-dressed, stylish ladies.

Willem Bastiaan Tholen
1860- 1931
Tholen’s impressionist works are generally classified under the Hague School, although Tholen himself objected to that.

Willem Witsen
1860-1923
Photographer and painter Witsen owes his fame in particular to the beautiful, foggy or almost monochrome city views of London and Amsterdam.

Floris Verster
1861-1927
Verster possibly painted this work during a visit to the Borinage mining region in Belgium. Vincent van Gogh, completely unknown at the time, had made the same trip a year before.

Willem de Zwart
1862-1932
Zwart is counted among the Hague Impressionists. His works show considerable affinity with those of Breitner and Israëls.

Dolf Breetvelt
1892-1975
A devoted traveller, Breetvelt lived in Indonesia for many years. In 1948 he switched to abstract painting and joined a group of artists who called themselves Vrij Beelden.

Willem Hussem
1900-1974
Painter, poet and sculptor Hussem met Mondrian and Picasso in Paris and was a member of the Vrij Beelden group of artists. His works can be found in various Dutch museums.

Bram van Velde
1895-1981
Van Velde is known for his abstract geometric paintings, which represent a search for inner imagery. Admired by Cobra artists, his works can be found in many museum collections the world over, such as in San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museum.

Leo Dooper
1934-2012
Dooper’s style of painting is closely related to literature and poetry. The title of the work shown here is "Head resting on a chair and embracing two flowers".

Anton Heyboer
1924-2005
Heyboer claimed to work from a sense of total emptiness. ”Actually my work is completely pointless”, he used to say. It has nevertheless found its way to countless museums all over the world. In the Netherlands Heyboer is known in particular for sharing a household with five women.

Ans Hey
1931-2010
Hey was a sculptor known for her organic and sensual Love Tables (“Tables d’Amour”) and monumental works for public spaces. She had a studio in the French town of Lacoste, right next to the castle of the Marquis de Sade. 

Jacqueline de Jong
1939
With her partner and fellow-Cobra member Asger Jorn, De Jong was the driving force behind the art group within Situationist International, a revolutionary movement from the 1950s and 1960s. The well-known art collectors Hans and Alice de Jong were her parents. De Jong has exhibited all over the world, and the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen organised a retrospective of her work.

Christoph Kiefhaber
1941
Works by this Austrian artist, who developed a “pop-art” version of cubism, have been on display all over the world. Kiefhaber is inspired by Picasso,

Moissey Kogan
1879-1943
Kogan, who was of Jewish-Russian parentage, lived in Paris and is mainly known as a sculptor although he also illustrated many books. The Nazis qualified his work as “entartete Kunst”. Kogan died in Auschwitz during the war.

Ahmad Baldin
1954
Baldin, born in Iraq, paints warm landscapes and cities that do not exist; he calls them “imaginary” himself.

Marc Mulders
1958
In the Netherlands, Mulders is seen as one of the major contemporary artists. His builds up his expressive and sometimes religious works with thick splashes of paint. Mulders’ paintings can be found in all museums for contemporary art in the Netherlands.

Martin van Vreden
1952
Van Vreden is mainly known for the floral motifs that he uses in many of his works. Flowers as objects. Around the year 2000 the Ambassade Hotel commissioned Van Vreden to design the glass hotel entrance.