Asger Jorn

Asger Jorn (March 3, 1914 - May 1, 1973) was born in Vejrum, Jutland, Denmark under the name Oluf Jørgensen. Sometimes also called Asgar Jorn. He was a brother to Jørgen Nash. Both his parents were teachers. His fatehr was a fundamentalist Christian who died when he was 12 years old. His mother was more liberal but committed Christian. Thus by the age of 16 he was influenced by Nicolai Grundtvig. Although he hd already started to paint, Asger enrolled in the teacher training college in Silkeborg where he paid particular attention to a course in Nineteenth Century Scandinavian thought. When he graduated in 1935, the principal wrote a reference for him which said that he had attained 'an extraordinary rich personal development and maturity' - especially because of his wide reading in areas outside the topics required for his studies. Whilst at College he joined the Danish Communist Party and came under the direct influence of Christian Christensen.

In 1936 he went to Paris to join Fernand Léger's Académie Contemporaine. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark Jorn was an active communist in the resistance. He participated in the art group Høst.

After the occupation was over, he complained that opportunities for critical thinking was curtailed by more centralised bourgeois political control. Finding this unacceptable, he broke with the Danish Communist Party whilst remaining a lifelong philosophical communist. He was a founder member of COBRA and was a prime mover of their subsequent merger with the Lettriste Internationale and London Psychogeographical Association to form the Situationist International (S.I.). Here he applied his scientific and mathematical knowledge drawn from Henri Poincaré and Niels Bohr to develop his situlogical technique.

In 1961 he left the S.I. to found the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism. Later, he donated a museum for modern art to the Danish town of Silkeborg, near where he grew up.

His philosophical system Triolectics was given a practical manifestation through the development of Three sided football.

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.h

Sitemap
Painter sitemap
Techniques sitemap
Materials sitemap