Asger Jorn

Asger Jorn Poet & Thinker 1962 Oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm. Framed. Signed 'Jorn'. Signed, dated and titled 'Dichter & Denker 1962 Jorn' and with dedication on the reverse of the canvas. Guy Atkins, Asger Jorn, The crucial years 1954 - 1964, London 1977, WVZ no. 1414 Provenance Directly from the artist; Werner Haftmann Collection, Berlin; Private collection, Southern Germany Exhibitions Humlebaek 1965 (Louisiana Foundation), Asger Jorn, exhibition cat.no.112 (with sticker on the reverse) Amsterdam 1964/1965 (Stedelijk Museum), Asger Jorn, exhibition cat.no.109 Basel 1964 (Kunsthalle), Asger Jorn, Eugène Dodeigne, exhibition cat.no.92 (with sticker on the back) "Beware of Asger Jorn if you can't stand contradictions. His most drunken, joyous colours - glowing greens, yellows, reds and blues - shadow sadness. [...] If something seems laboriously worked out, or gives the impression you've seen it somewhere before, or if it looks like you don't know it - it's not Jorn. If you're not sure he's actually on the most personal and intimate terms with each and every one of his trolls, monsters, and satyrs - it's not Jorn. Don't expect Jorn's creatures to necessarily come from the ancient Norse forests where they once dwelled. Jorn also gets them from the great cities, from the southernmost South [...]." (John Lefebre, in: Asger Jorn, exh. Cat. Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover 1973, p. 7). In this "warning about Asger Jorn," John Lefebre aptly locates the artist in the field of tension between the mystical mythical world of his Scandinavian homeland, which with its archaic power forms the inspiring basis of his artistic work, and his European cosmopolitanism. Extensively educated and interested, multilingual, with the best contacts in the European art centres and constantly travelling, he created an enormous oeuvre with a light hand and tireless creative power, which also includes sculptures, ceramics and tapestries. His pictorial oeuvre is complemented by his literary works, in which he deals with natural sciences or politics as well as with aesthetics and the symbolic world of folk art. As a counterpoint to his intellectual debates, fantastic myths always resonate in the background of Jorn's world of thought; he discovers hidden phenomena everywhere in everyday existence and charges the things that surround him with magical meaning. In his pictorial works, these deep-seated metaphysical perceptions break through in an automatic painting process. In this auction, four paintings by Asger Jorn can be offered that trace the development of his painting over two decades. The early, untitled painting from 1942 (lot 65) is still influenced by the École de Paris with its light colours and free colour surfaces, which Jorn became intensively acquainted with during his time in the French capital in 1936/1937 as a student of Fernand Léger and as a collaborator of Le Corbusier. The shadowed areas shifting into the picture surface from the left already announce the mysterious themes of the world of dreams and legends that gradually penetrated his work. The two works from the 1950s are entirely devoted to these dramatic myths and are thus in keeping with the principles of the COBRA movement, which Jorn co-founded in 1948. "Untitled" from 1953 (lot 66), with its strong sense of motion, sweeps the viewer right into the middle of an unknown, mysterious adventure: a ship in a storm, a torn landscape, the jaws of a monster armed with teeth can be discerned. The depiction as well as the signature seem to be thrown onto the painting surface with feverish, primal force. Two black, demonic figures make their way through a bright landscape in "On suit son chemin" from 1956 (lot 68). The ghosts, monsters, masks, and chimeras present in Jorn's paintings derive from folk art and the age-old legends that he and his COBRA comrades-in-arms understand to be fundamental to the everyday world. "One can only arrive at truth by applying one's imagination to the most implausible images like those of Bosch and Brueghel, but then in a pictorial language like that of the ancient Indians, Vikings, primitives, and not in a surrealistic naturalistic language. We are not to give descriptions of man as an animal. But are to describe ourselves as animals. That is our way," Jorn wrote to Constant in 1950 (cit. after: Ausst.Kat. Asger Jorn 1914-1973. Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours