Asger Jorn

Biography

Asger Jorgensen

 (1914, Vejrum, Danemark - 1973, Aarhus, Danemark)

In 1936, Asger Jorn arrived in Paris to join the Académie contemporaine of Fernand Léger. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Jorn was a communist, active in the resistance, and participated in the artistic group Høst.

During Stalinism, Jorn left the Danish Communist Party while continuing, until the end of his life, to declare himself to be a communist. He was one of the founders of the CoBrA movement. He accounted for the fusion of the IMIB (International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus) (that he had founded in 1953), of the Letterist International and of the London Psychogeographical Association, in one unified movement : the Situationist International in 1957.

In 1959 and in 1962, Jorn produced two big series : les Modifications (1959) and les Nouvelles défigurations (1962). In both cases, it was ordinary paintings, landscapes or portraits, repainted by Jorn directly on the surface, and in his style. Each painting, pictorially reintinterpreted in his significant and expressive singularity, was revived by the modification of its intrinsic value. These modifications were coming from the diversion as it was explained by Situationists but also from a central criticism of the limited nature of the modern artistic activity due to new social conditions of the triumphing capitalism at the end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties.

Exhibitions selected

Solo exhibitions

2014 - Asger Jorn, Restless Rebel, Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark
2013 - Peintures, Centre Pompidou, Paris
2012 - Institut Tomie Ohtake, Sao Paulo
2012 - Asger Jorn, un artiste libre, Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne
2011 -  Musée Fabre, Montpellier
2010 - Musée des Beaux-arts, Rouen
2003 - Musée des Beaux-arts, Rennes

Collections

Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Museum Jorn de Silkeborg, Denmark
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
Guggenheim Museum, New York City
Musée National d'art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres