Asger Jorn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Asger Jorn
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Jorn photographed in 1963 by Erling Mandelmann
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Asger Oluf Jørgensen
3 March 1914 Vejrum, Jutland, Denmark
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| Died | 1 May 1973 (aged 59) Århus, Denmark
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| Known for | Painting |
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Notable work
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Stalingrad |
Asger Oluf Jorn (born March 3, 1914 – died May 1, 1973) was a famous Danish artist. He was a painter, sculptor, and even wrote books. He also worked with ceramics.
Jorn helped start two important art groups: COBRA and the Situationist International. He was born in a town called Vejrum in Denmark. His birth name was Asger Oluf Jørgensen.
You can see the largest collection of Jorn's artworks at the Museum Jorn, Silkeborg in Denmark. This includes his very important painting called Stalingrad. Jorn also gave some of his art and property to a town in Italy, where the "Casa Museo Jorn" was created.
Contents
Growing Up: Asger Jorn's Early Life
Asger was the second of six children. His younger brother was Jørgen Nash, who also became an artist. Both of Asger's parents were teachers. His father died in a car crash when Asger was 12 years old. His mother was a very religious person. Asger started to dislike strict rules and authority because of this early influence.
When he was 15, he got tuberculosis, a serious lung disease. Luckily, he got better after three months. At 16, he was inspired by N. F. S. Grundtvig, a Danish writer. Even though he already painted, Asger went to a teacher-training college. He learned a lot about Scandinavian ideas from the 1800s there. Around this time, another painter, Martin Kaalund-Jørgensen, painted Asger. This encouraged Asger to try oil painting himself.
Starting His Art Journey: Early Career
Asger finished college in 1935. His principal said he had "extraordinary rich personal development." This was because he read many books outside of his studies. While in college, he joined the local branch of the Communist Party of Denmark. He became good friends with Christian Christensen, a syndicalist writer. Jorn later said Christensen was like a second father to him.
In 1936, Jorn traveled to Paris on a motorbike. He wanted to study with the famous artist Wassily Kandinsky. But Kandinsky was having money problems. So, Jorn decided to join Fernand Léger's art school instead. During this time, he stopped painting realistic pictures and started painting abstract art. In 1937, he worked with Le Corbusier on a building for the 1937 Paris Exhibition. He went back to Denmark that summer. He visited Paris again in 1938 before returning to Denmark. Asger Jorn was friends with a Danish art dealer named Børge Birch. Birch sold Jorn's art even in the 1930s. Jorn later had many art shows in different galleries.
From 1937 to 1942, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
World War II: A Difficult Time
When Nazi Germany occupied Denmark, it was a very hard time for Jorn. He believed strongly in peace. The occupation made him very sad at first. But then, he joined the communist resistance movement to fight back. During the war, he also started an underground art group called Helhesten, meaning "hell-horse." He wrote for their magazine, also called Helhesten. In 1939, he wrote an important essay called "Intimate Banalities." In it, he said that the future of art was in "kitsch" (art that is considered low-brow but often charming). He even praised amateur landscape paintings as "the best art today." He was also the first person to translate the writer Franz Kafka into Danish.
After the War: New Art Movements
After the war, Jorn felt that there wasn't enough freedom for new ideas within the communist movement. He felt it was too controlled. He decided to leave the Communist Party of Denmark. However, he still believed in changing how Marxist ideas looked at capitalism, especially from an artist's point of view. He officially left the party in the mid-1960s.
In the autumn of 1948, he traveled to France. There, he started the COBRA art movement with Christian Dotremont and Constant. COBRA was a European art group that focused on spontaneous and experimental art. He also edited some books for the COBRA group. In 1949, Jorn started a relationship with Matie van Domselaer. They got married in 1950 and had two children, Ole and Bodil. The COBRA group ended in 1951.
In 1951, Jorn returned to Silkeborg, Denmark. He was very poor and sick with tuberculosis again. He started working with ceramics in 1953. The next year, he went to Albissola Marina in Italy. There, he joined a group called the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, which was connected to COBRA.
Situationist International: Art and Revolution
In 1954, Jorn met Guy Debord, who became a close friend. They worked together on two artist's books: Fin de Copenhague (1957) and Mémoires (1959). They also made prints and wrote introductions for each other's work.
Jorn helped create the Situationist International (SI) in 1957. This group was formed by combining the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, the Lettriste Internationale, and the London Psychogeographical Association. Jorn used his knowledge of science and math to develop his "situlogical" technique. He believed that Situationist ideas were not just about art. They were also about politics and changing society. He fully supported the SI's revolutionary goals with Debord.
The Situationists wanted to fight against how capitalism made people's lives worse. They wanted to create new ways of living, focusing on play, freedom, and critical thinking. Jorn applied these ideas to his painting.
In 1961, he left the SI in a friendly way. He still supported their ideas and goals and even helped fund them. But he felt their new approach wasn't working.
He then started the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism in Silkeborg. He also contributed to the Situationist Times magazine. Later, he gave a modern art museum to Silkeborg, the town where he grew up. He remained close to Debord and continued to support Situationist publications.
Jorn's ideas about Triolectics (a philosophical system) led to the creation of three sided football, a unique sport.
Later Years: Travel and Art
Jorn had his first solo art show in America at the Lefebre Gallery in 1962. After 1966, he kept painting with oil. He traveled around Europe with photographer Gerard Franceschi, collecting images for his huge collection called "10,000 Years of Nordic Folk Art." He traveled a lot, visiting Cuba, England, and the Far East. Jorn only visited the United States once, in 1970, for a gallery opening. He had previously said he wouldn't visit a country that made visitors sign a paper saying they weren't communists.
In 1964, he received a Guggenheim Award, which included a lot of money.
Throughout his life, Asger Jorn created more than 2,500 artworks. These included paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics, sculptures, artist's books, collages, and tapestries he made with others.
He passed away in Aarhus, Denmark, on May 1, 1973. He is buried in a cemetery on the island of Gotland in Sweden.
Asger Jorn's Writings
Asger Jorn also wrote several books and articles about art and philosophy.
Luck and Chance: Dagger and Guitar (1952)
This was Jorn's first published book. He wrote it while recovering from a serious illness in a sanatorium. It was meant to be a doctoral paper, but a professor at Copenhagen University refused it. The book talks about ideas from philosophers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. It's a very important text to understand Jorn's goal of "reconstructing philosophy from an artist's point of view."
Internationale Situationniste (1957–1961)
Jorn wrote several articles for the Internationale Situationniste magazine:
- Originality and Magnitude (on Isou's System) (1960)
- Open Creation and its Enemies (1960)
- Pataphysics, A Religion in the Making (1961)
Critique of Political Economy and the Exploitation of the Unique (1961)
This book has two parts. The first part looks at some ideas in Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Jorn uses this to discuss how the work of "creative people" can have "value" in a future society based on communist ideas. The second part argues against some Russian ideas and the attempt for Denmark and Britain to join the Common Market. Jorn's main idea here is for an independent international group of "creative people." He wanted them to use Scandinavian ways to create "artistic value" for everyone's benefit. He also tried to connect the unique role of artists with his socialist beliefs.
The Natural Order (1962)
Jorn wrote about his thoughts on Niels Bohr's theory of complementarity. He also critiqued dialectical materialism, which he had believed in when he was younger.
Signes gravés sur les églises de l'Eure et du Calvados (1964)
Jorn noticed some old carvings on a church porch in France in 1946. He had seen similar carvings in Scandinavia. So, he decided to study them. In 1961, he traveled with Franceschi to Normandy. They found many such markings in the Eure and Calvados areas. The results of their study were published in this book.
Images for kids
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An English translation of Creation Ouvert (Open Creation) published by Unpopular Books.
See Also
In Spanish: Asger Jorn para niños
- Art of Denmark
- List of Danish painters
- Members of the Situationist International
- Museum Jorn, Silkeborg
- Tachisme
