Eugene Brands was a Dutch artist known for his abstract paintings. He was an early member of CoBrA, an avant-garde art movement in Europe; CoBrA was active from 1948 to 1951, and the initials stand for Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, the home cities of the movement. In 1949 Brands left the movement to branch out on his own, and he became interested in primitive cultures, especially in the music, ethnography and magical aspects of these cultures. In the 1950’s he became interested in children’s drawings, and in the 60’s he returned to abstract figuration, with two major themes: eternal motion and the immensity of the cosmos. In 1993 he stopped painting on canvas because the canvas was too heavy for him physically, and he confined himself to gouache on paper after that. This seventh piece is entitled “Day and Night and the Cosmic Cycle” (“Dag en Nacht; en Kosmische Cycle” in Dutch on the verso), and it clearly reflects his favorite theme, the cosmos. The painting is matted and signed “brands” in the lower left part of the image, it was done in 1973, and it is signed and dated on the verso as well. It reads “5430 Dag en Nacht; en Kosmische Cycle, 3 januari 1973 - 2, 25.5 x 31” on the verso. The overall size is 20 1/8 in. x 22 1/4 in. wide and the sight size is 9 3/4 in. x 11 5/8 in. wide.