The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of December 17, 2025
Poem
1960
(Belgian, 1927-)
John L. Severance Fund 1994.163.1
Location: Not on view
Description
Was it snowing?—When she gave me this little bit of snow, the sun was hiding so that nothing of our meeting should melt, so that the fire between us would light without any help, only through our warmth, for want of our silence, and from elsewhere.This print was commissioned as part of an artist's book called 21 Etchings and Poems. At the time of its creation, the book was the most significant collaboration between artists and poets in America. Here, Pierre Alechinsky and artist and poet Christian Dotremont demonstrate the collaborative spirit of COBRA. Alechinsky wrote Dotremont's poem in his own handwriting and signed the names of both artists to the plate. Alechinsky's etching, showing a round flea-like animal, is surrounded by an abstract background of flowing lines that seem to anticipate an artistic form later invented by Dotremont: the logogram. Logograms were beautifully calligraphic artworks that abstracted the written word, often to the point of illegibility, in order to challenge the frontier between painting and writing.
- Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; September 16 - November 23, 2003. " Object in Focus: Karl Appel and the Legacy of COBRA "
- {{cite web|title=Poem|url=false|author=Pierre Alechinsky|year=1960|access-date=17 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1994.163.1