Poem

Poem — Pierre Alechinsky. 1960.

Medium: etching and aquatint. Dimensions: .

Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

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.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.