The chart is an interactive lineage map. COBRA sits at the center, on a timeline that runs from older movements at the top to newer ones at the bottom. The movements that influenced it appear above it, any parallel movements it developed alongside sit on its own row, and the movements it later influenced appear below. Every line is a real, cited connection between two movements: a solid line is an influence historians broadly agree on, and a dashed line is an indirect, parallel, or contested link.

For COBRA (1948 – 1951), it traces one movement that shaped it, a well-established link: Expressionism; it runs alongside two parallel movements, all well-established links: Art Informel and Tachisme.