Asger Jorn

Private Collection, Denmark
Thence by descent to the present owner

Copenhagen, Galerie Hybler, Asger Jorn, 1960

Guy Atkins, Asger Jorn: Jorn in Scandinavia 1930-1953, London 1968, p. 240, illustrated and p. 369, no. 484, illustrated

The following works from an Important Private Scandinavian Collection bring together some of the undisputed titans of European Post-War abstraction. Consisting of a cohesive group of masterpieces by Serge Poliakoff, Pierre Soulages, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn and Alberto Magnelli, this exceptional collection bears witness to some of the key artistic developments occurring in Paris during the crucial Post-War years of cultural and aesthetic change.

After settling in the French capital in 1935, Serge Poliakoff became inspired by the example of Kandinsky whose work taught him the qualities of pure colour and the emotive resonance within their simultaneous contrasts. With his curved colour-form compositions, Poliakoff developed a highly individual form of abstract painting through arranging different colour fields next to one another. The harmonious yet highly charged relationships of the colours and his way of building up the composition from the edges gradually towards the centre, is exemplified in Composition; a mature work from 1955 that marks the culmination of his creative abilities.

Another pillar of the Ecole de Paris was Pierre Soulages, who after seeing exhibitions of Cezanne and Picasso, began to take an interest in the expressive capacity of abstract art. Composed of a build up of dark, heavy brushstrokes against a lighter canvas ground, his work evokes comparison with the work of Franz Kline and is remarkable for its fluidity and freedom of execution.

At the helm of this collection are five important paintings by Asger Jorn and Karel Appel from the 1940s. They offer significant insight into the evolution of the COBRA movement that formed around these two artists whilst they resided in Paris during the late 1940s. The vibrant fusion of colour and form within these works breaks down conventional boundaries between the opposing realms of pictorial figuration and abstraction; something that was to prove hugely influential in the development of European art for generations to come.