Asger Jorn

ASGER JORN

"I'VE MADE A MESS OF YOUR WALL"

The Læsø Painting has been relocated to another exhibition space in the museum. You will find them on your route through Carl-Henning Pedersen 100 Years. You are welcome to ask for the exhibition space P1.

Constantly curious, Asger Jorn's influence on Danish and European art in the mid-twentieth century was momentous. His expressive, Spontaneous-Abstract style attained great international recognition but Jorn actually employed a plethora of different styles and artistic idioms.

Læsø, 1965

Description
The Læsø Painting comprises seven individual units, placed next to one another in a room dedicated to them. Its colours are vivid and it is painted in an abstract expressive style.

Dominated by rapid, spontaneous brushstrokes in colours of varying intensity and luminosity, the painting has no distinctly figurative elements and is characterised by the interplay of the expressive colours.

About the work
During a visit in 1965 to art dealer Børge Birch's holiday home on Læsø, Asger Jorn was tempted by the white walls of the house. In a matter of hours he completed a large mural in distempers with a transparent, watercolour-like glow. Quick, delicate brushstrokes spread from the wall into a door niche, up a staircase and into the former granary where the colours become darker, browner and more saturated in accordance with the room’s architecture.
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Jorn's art in general
Throughout his life Jorn employed most of the artistic media: drawing, graphic prints, murals, sculpture, ceramics, tapestries and various kinds of books and magazines. In all these media he expressed a constant desire for renewal and an interest in art's potential.

Working only a few years with the concrete, machine-like idiom that distinguished Léger's paintings, instead Jorn changed direction in favour of the ambiguous and less tangible experiments of Surrealism.
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Literature
"Asger Jorn", ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, 2002
"Asger Jorn: The Crucial Years 1954-1964: A Study of Asger Jorn's Artistic Development from 1954 to 1964 and a catalogue of his Oil Paintings from that Period" (Guy Atkins) Wittenborn Ari Books, New York, 1977