Lot Essay
THREE IMPORTANT WORKS BY ASGER JORN
These three works executed between 1954 and 1958, a gestural figurative painting and two works on paper, (lots 137, 138 & 170) capture the freedom, spontaneity and frenetic energy characteristic of Asger Jorn’s oeuvre. The late 1950’s was a critical period in Jorn’s career, which was instrumental in establishing his international reputation. As a leading member of the CoBra group [Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br), Amsterdam (A)], Jorn’s work explores the desire to reinvent art with a raw vitality and a focus on materiality, and his oil paintings in particular demonstrate his subversive use of the traditional artistic medium.
Characteristic of his work, crude spontaneity is central to the present lots, as Jorn sought authentic expression inspired by naive art, children’s drawings and ancient mythology. In doing so, he often exploited the characteristics of the medium to expressive ends with vibrant colour palettes as in his oil or gouache works or through the freedom and loose properties of ink and wash. Vitality and exuberance underscores his art, expressing a sense of renewal through the eruption of form or colour and the frantic brush marks which suggest speed of execution. It is possible to trace the artist’s process of creation through the varied textures and suggestive organic lines created by impasto application or thinner washes of pigment, emphasising Jorn’s versatile and innovative technique.
Jean Dubuffet, a close friend of Asger Jorn remarked: ‘He was skilled at producing sense out of original chaos. In all his activities the same principle applied in his work: thought sprang out of action, not the other way round. So his paintings took shape out of a violent disorder and incoherence. He excelled at producing a meaning during the course of creation - being careful not to intervene too much, so as not to lose anything of the spontaneous flow: he liked to keep meaning speculative. He was in love with the irrational, it was the irrational which, in all his works he continually faced’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in G. Atkins, Asger Jorn Supplement: Paintings 1930-1973, London 1986, p. 15).
These three works executed between 1954 and 1958, a gestural figurative painting and two works on paper, (lots 137, 138 & 170) capture the freedom, spontaneity and frenetic energy characteristic of Asger Jorn’s oeuvre. The late 1950’s was a critical period in Jorn’s career, which was instrumental in establishing his international reputation. As a leading member of the CoBra group [Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br), Amsterdam (A)], Jorn’s work explores the desire to reinvent art with a raw vitality and a focus on materiality, and his oil paintings in particular demonstrate his subversive use of the traditional artistic medium.
Characteristic of his work, crude spontaneity is central to the present lots, as Jorn sought authentic expression inspired by naive art, children’s drawings and ancient mythology. In doing so, he often exploited the characteristics of the medium to expressive ends with vibrant colour palettes as in his oil or gouache works or through the freedom and loose properties of ink and wash. Vitality and exuberance underscores his art, expressing a sense of renewal through the eruption of form or colour and the frantic brush marks which suggest speed of execution. It is possible to trace the artist’s process of creation through the varied textures and suggestive organic lines created by impasto application or thinner washes of pigment, emphasising Jorn’s versatile and innovative technique.
Jean Dubuffet, a close friend of Asger Jorn remarked: ‘He was skilled at producing sense out of original chaos. In all his activities the same principle applied in his work: thought sprang out of action, not the other way round. So his paintings took shape out of a violent disorder and incoherence. He excelled at producing a meaning during the course of creation - being careful not to intervene too much, so as not to lose anything of the spontaneous flow: he liked to keep meaning speculative. He was in love with the irrational, it was the irrational which, in all his works he continually faced’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in G. Atkins, Asger Jorn Supplement: Paintings 1930-1973, London 1986, p. 15).