ASGER JORN FROM FLOOR TO CEILING

Asger Jorn's enormous wall paintings from Læsø have found their way to Jorn's artistic hometown, Silkeborg.

A central part of Asger Jorn’s (1914-1973) artistic repertoire is his decorations. It was important to Jorn that there was art where life unfolds in everyday life. Perhaps the most well-known examples can be found at public and accessible institutions such as the State High School in Aarhus, the Revolution Archive in Havana, the Culture House in Randers and the library in Silkeborg. But there are also a number of lesser-known decorations that Jorn made for private spaces that are less accessible today. One of these is the enormous wall paintings in gallerist Børge Birch’s summer house on Læsø.

Jorn painted the walls at Birch from floor to ceiling in the summer of 1965. Later, the over 50 square meter decoration was dismantled, preserved and made mobile. For a number of years, the decoration has been showcased at the ARKEN Museum for Contemporary Art in Ishøj Municipality. Here the installation was waiting for a museum of modern art of be built in Copenhagen, where it was to be presented in the future. The museum was not realized, and the idea of ​​showing this monument in Asger Jorn’s artistic production to a wider public lost momentum.

Thanks to a great commitment and generous hospitality from Børge and Karie Birch’s daughter, Anette Birch, the ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art and the Municipality of Copenhagen, the murals from Læsø have now found their way to Jorn’s artistic hometown, Silkeborg, where they will be permanently displayed in a spacious installation.

About the exhibition

In addition to the installation of Asger Jorn’s murals from Læsø, in autumn 2024, Museum Jorn will highlight decorations that he carried out in various private homes. A small selection of works, photographs and other archive material gives an insight into the decorations that Jorn created for his own house in Albisola in Italy and in the homes of e.g. the art collector Elna Fonnesbech Sandberg in Tisvilde, the architect and visual artist Robert Dahlmann Olsen in Dragør and the architect Marinus Andersen in Copenhagen.