Klee and CoBrA: Child's Play

Friedrich Froebel's invention of the kindergarten in the nineteenth century and Rudolf Steiner's educational theory at the start of the twentieth century had enormous consequences for modern art--above all in their theorizings of childhood creativity. Paul Klee in particular was greatly influenced by their work and the particular qualities of children's art, as his finger paintings and puppets, as well as his writings, attest. Following Klee's lead, and in the wake of the Second World War, the loose collective of artists known as CoBrA (from the initials of the members' home cities of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam) embraced childhood creativity as a redemptive freedom against the comparative formal strictures of earlier avant gardes. This volume examines the dialogue that Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn and Joseph Noiret forged with the art of Paul Klee, underlining Klee's more playful and mischievous qualities.