As a founder and initiator of Cobra Dotremont played an important role as a writer in the group. He founded the eponymous magazine and wrote a number of articles about befriended artists. Together with Jorn, Corneille, Atlan, Vandercam and Alechinsky he made four-handed works, so-called ‘peintures-mots’ (word paintings). He suffered from tuberculosis, which left traces in his literary and pictorial work. After numerous travels in Scandinavia (Denmark and Finland) he developed the logogram in 1962, in which word and painting become one. This resulted in both plastic as literary calligraphic drawings in East-Indian ink, often filled in with in pencil written text in the margins.