Asger Jorn

ASGER JORN (Denmark, 1914-1973).
Lithographic folder, 1958.
Series of four lithographs, copy 51/90.
Signed by the artist and justified by hand.
Edition by Ridotto, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Torino.
They present humidity stains.
Measurements: 50 x 35 cm (plates); 51,5 x 36,5 cm (folder).

Asger Jorn was a Danish artist and co-founder of the CoBrA group with Karel Appel. The artist experimented with spontaneous lines and semi-figurative representations in paintings he called "modifications". "A creative train of thought starts with the unexpected, the unknown, the accidental, the accidental, the disorderly, the absurd, the impossible," he wrote.

Jorn was born on March 3, 1914 in Vejrum, in the western part of Jutland. His parents were teachers and, after his father's early death, his mother Maren moved to Silkeborg with her six children. Jorn attended school, joined the boy scouts and his association with the trade unionist Christian Christensen sharpened his political commitment.

In 1936, Jorn arrived in Paris to join Fernand Léger's contemporary Academy. From 1937 to 1942, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Later, during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Jorn was an active communist within the resistance and participated in the art group Høst. After the end of the occupation, the possibilities for free critical thinking in the communist milieu became more limited, due to the more centralized political authority. Jorn found this unacceptable and broke with the Danish Communist Party although he remained a communist all his life.

In 1945 he joined the revolutionary surrealists. He was one of the founders of the Cobra movement. His first Parisian solo exhibition takes place at the Galerie Breteau in 1948. writes poetry and essays on art (Organic Theory of Art). Jorn returns to Denmark in 1951 and undertakes intensive ceramic work in 1953. Jorn settled in Albisola (Italy) in 1954.

In 1957, the Lettrist International, in which he participated, merged with the MIBI (International Movement for an Imagist Bauhaus), and the London Psychogeographical Association (London Psychogeographical Committee), to form the Situationist International. Around July 28, 1957, they merged with the International Movement for an Imagist Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Association to form the Situationist International.

In 1961, he left the Situationist International to found the Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism, where he focused on studies of Nordic culture begun decades earlier.Jorn considered Nordic culture unique in that it embraced many contradictions and ambiguities and contrasted it with the southern European tradition, because it took images rather than words as its starting point.

Jorn fought for total freedom in art. He produced a multiple work, painting, collage, writing, tapestries, sculpture, in the last years of his life, ceramics, and a valuable work on paper (engravings, lithographs, drawings, book illustrations). Jorn also puts his art at the service of a rebellion against the sacred. He published ''The Green Language and Drunkenness'' in 1968, a pamphlet against structuralism.

Awards and recognitions: he was decorated with the Order of the Great Gidouille. Order of the pataphysicists. In 1964 he was awarded a Guggenheim Prize. Prize that was rejected by Jorn with a telegram sent from Paris.

His paintings are represented in the most important museums of modern art around the world, including the British Tate Modern, the MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.