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Asger Jorn (1914-1973) is one of Scandinavia’s most influential and internationally recognized artists.
Jorn was extremely productive, and for more than 40 years he worked and experimented with everything from drawings, graphics, paintings, ceramics, sculptures, and weavings to texts on art and philosophy. Jorn worked in a personal and easily accessible folk-based imagery, insisting that art should be for everyone.
The exhibition traces Asger Jorn’s artistic development in a chronological sequence. The narrative, focusing on Jorn’s artistic practice, is accompanied by a presentation of works by other artists with whom Jorn had a close relationship or whose art inspired him, including representatives of the international CoBrA movement and the Situationist International, both of which Jorn co-founded.
A democratic view of art
Asger Jorn was intent on making art accessible to a broad audience far beyond the metropolitan centres of Paris and Copenhagen. Alongside his own artistic career, he therefore acquired international contemporary art, which he donated to the town of Silkeborg over a period of twenty years. At the time of his death in 1973, the town’s art collection comprised around 5,500 works by approximately 150 different artists, including several of Jorn’s own.