$Unique_ID{bob00160} $Pretitle{} $Title{Denmark Danish Art After 1945} $Subtitle{} $Author{H. E. Norregard-Nielsen} $Affiliation{Press and Cultural Relations} $Subject{art danish artists jorn work denmark war artist asger important} $Date{1988} $Log{} Title: Denmark Book: Fact Sheets on Denmark Author: H. E. Norregard-Nielsen Affiliation: Press and Cultural Relations Date: 1988 Danish Art After 1945 The Danish poet, hagiographer and travel writer Johannes Jorgensen was also an art critic, and he once wrote that Danish painting seems to be governed by a law that reverts everything to Eckersberg. It was he who with his own paintings and through his teaching at the Academy of Art had laid the foundations of a tradition in Danish painting that since his day has constantly been revivified by the best Danish painters, who have also been inspired by art from abroad. Eckersberg had studied under the great David in Paris, above all he had learned from him to see and reproduce honestly. In the best of his pupils, both direct and indirect, this Gallic limpidity was combined with the more turgid nationalistic bent, which took one direction in Christen Kobke's sparkling, summer-green, colouristically refined art and another in J. Th. Lundbye's more emotive and ambiguous works, in which, in the words of the artist himself, may be heard "the deep organ tones of Nature". The art of Eckersberg Kobke and Lundbye grew out of the Danish form of the Biedermeier style, it was an art backgrounded in the Napoleonic wars and a fear that the destructive chauvinism might make itself felt again. The influence of the First World War brought about another alteration in art with the disappearance of a whole lifestyle. In Denmark the painter Vilhelm Lundstrom was able to familiarise himself with Picasso and cubism and this resulted in a group of abstract compositions that caused a great stir and scandal. A doctor went so far as to demonstrate that the abstract artist were insane, but it was through them that Danish art received new invigoration. Asger Jorn During the Second World War a group of young artists gathered together in Copenhagen. Most of them were born about 1910, and some of them had been able to pay brief visits to France before the frontiers were closed by the war. This applied in particular to Asger Jorn (1914-1973), who had resolutely journeyed to Paris in 1937 to study under Kandinsky. When this proved to be impossible he went instead to L*eger, and it is evident from Jorn's earliest paintings that Klee and Mir*o influenced him greatly. In Copenhagen Jorn met painters like Ejler Bille (b. 1910), Carl-Henning Pedersen, (b. 1913), Else Alfelt (1910-1974) and Egill Jacobsen (b. 1910), who had been working on a number of parallel artistic forms, but who were also inspired by Danish art from before the Golden Age. The Danish painters, like those everywhere else, believed that abstract art would open many more people's eyes to art. They felt that art had distanced itself too far from its common human origins, and allowed themselves to be inspired by the ornamental art of the Vikings, wall paintings and children's drawings. They sought for spontaneous expression and cultivated psychoanalysis in an effort to uncover the hidden layers of the personality. The artists expressed their views in a journal they had named HELHESTEN, after the three-legged horse in a Danish fable; they published articles about each other and about everything that interested them, producing their paintings at the same time. Egill Jacobsen, sensing the mounting threat of war, painted his "Heap" (1937-38), which is considered to be the first abstract-expressionistic work of art in Denmark. Bille was working at this time on pictures in which he painted minute forms that, like germinating buds, spread over the canvas until it was filled. Jorn was influenced by both of these artists, and it was he who after the war took the initiative in establishing the association of artists known as COBRA, which in addition to its Danish nucleus also included Dutch and Belgian members. Content in expression As an association COBRA existed only between 1948 and 1951. Asger Jorn disbanded it when in company with Dotremont he was admitted to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Silkeborg. While there he was permitted to paint in the mortuary, where he produced a series of paintings that are an important part of his oeuvre. For the first time he painted spontaneously without making preliminary sketches. As one of his models he took the Norwegian expressionistic painter Edvard Munch, and with his titles he demonstrated both his roots in Scandinavian culture and his fervent commitment to the political movements of his time. Jorn did not get the reception he had hoped for in Denmark, and in 1953 he left the country. During the years that followed he worked in various parts of Europe and in Cuba. In Italy he began to work with ceramics and chose this medium for a monumental piece of decoration that he gave to Arhus in 1959. This work was one of the first in a long series of public projects commissioned by the Danish state from young artists since 1965 through the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts. Jorn completed this huge relief in four months; it takes its expression from an apparent battle between the artist and his material, which is formed and coloured by a temperament that through its individuality has achieved universality. Egill Jacobsen said of Jorn that he looked for the content in the expression, and this applies to several artists of this period. Henry Heerup (b. 1907) painted naturalistically, but as a sculptor he sought above all to release the expressiveness inherent in a block before he began work on it. He also made a large number of constructions out of rubbish, composed of discarded objects acquired by the artist, in whose opinion everything possesses a soul. The refuse takes on expression, it is characterised by the people who have used it and it is transformed into a monument to anonymous human beings and a fragment of their existence, when raised to eye level by the artist. Seven Hauptmann (b. 1911) achieves a similar effect with his collages and in addition has contributed an artistic sophistication to this genre. Mortensen and Jacobsen Contemporaneously with abstract-expressionistic art the painter Richard Mortensen (b. 1910) and the sculptor Robert Jacobsen (b. 1912) were producing more limpid and stringent works of art. Mortensen, who was closely linked with the Asger Jorn group for a short period during the war years, and who executed a few of the most significant pieces of abstract-expressionistic work then, paints with an equal emphasis on form, colour and line, his pictures are essentially architectural but express a poetical grace that has ensured them a position of distinction in contemporary concrete art. Robert Jacobsen learned his sculpture under Heerup, but in the course of long periods spent in France since 1947, including an important stay with Mortensen, he became absorbed in concrete art. This resulted in a series of sculptures in iron, in which he laid more stress on the hollow spaces in the sculpture than on the form that defines it. The only Danish artist to base his oeuvre on surrealism, Wilhelm Freddie (b. 1909) has achieved an independent and gifted style of his own within the convention. During the period that saw the birth and development of abstract art, most widespread in Denmark after the war, a great many painters and sculptors continued the work of the naturalistic tradition to which they made notable contributions. A number of these artists joined the association CORNER. They included Karl Bovin (b. 1907) whose superb landscapes mark the course of the seasons in Denmark, but who has also captured the light and colours of Bahrein while on long visits to that country. Lauritz Hartz (b. 1903) is one of the best ever sophisticated Danish colourists, and painters like Erik Raadal (1905-1941) and Soren Hjorth Nielsen (b. 1901) have brought new regions and different landscapes for appreciation into the sphere of Danish art. Nielsen and Christensen During the years between the wars the painter and engraver Aksel Jorgensen began to teach engraving at the Academy of Art. Himself an eminent draughtsman, his fame, like that of Eckersberg, rests chiefly on the talented brood he hatched. Among these artists are Palle Nielsen (b. 1920) and Povl Christensen (1909-1977). Palle Nielsen's art depicts city life in the setting of war, his pictures show, in his own words, "the human condition, angst, hope, indignation and emotion". Povl Christensen specialised in book illustration, including several works of Steen Steensen Blicher, the great story-teller from Jutland. Both artists would have achieved worldwide recognition if Danish were a more widely-read language and the rest of Europe more cognisant with the cultural life of Denmark. The numerous exponents of black and white engraving were also interested in making moderately priced reproductions of original pictures available to the general public. The efforts to bring art to the people also resulted in several Danish newspapers specialising in the publication of outstanding graphic illustrations, sometimes occupying the greater part of a page. A concrete and more expressionistic idiom has been strongly apparent in recent Danish art. Since his arrival in Denmark some years ago the German artist Arthur Kopcke has exerted a powerful influence. Both through his own work and that of several of his friends from abroad he has made Copenhagen one of the stations in the development of the Fluxus movement. During the 1960s a group of young Danish artists, including Per Kirkeby (b. 1938), Richard Winther (b. 1926), Paul Gernes (b. 1925) and Bjorn Norgard (b. 1947), based themselves on The School of Experimental Art, one of the extremely important private independent art schools instituted through the years in protest at the teaching methods of the Royal Academy of Art. Wiig Hansen and the brothers Haugen Sorensen A good deal of the art produced by both the Experimental School and other leading Danish artists is no longer in the museums or in the hands of private collectors. The National Endowment for the Arts made the means available for the commissioning of large decorative schemes for public milieux; Asger Jorn carried out one of the first of these projects, Carl-Henning Pedersen's most important work is in this genre, and several hundred decorative schemes of greater or lesser magnitude have already been executed nation-wide. The National Endowment has also made it possible to allow young artists to undertake work in monumental form. One of them is the painter and sculptor Svend Wiig Hansen (b. 1922), whose style, originating in sculpture of sugary classicism, has metamorphosed into a fierce expressionism represented in sculpture, paintings and graphics. The brothers Arne and Jorgen Haugen Sorensen (b. 1932) (b. 1934), painter and sculptor respectively, have created some of the most significant works of the younger generation; other artists include the sculptors Willy Orskov (b. 1920) and Eva Sorensen (b. 1940). Rooted in tradition In company with that of other nations, Danish art in recent decades has been affected by rapid changes of direction and by some of the current leading figures in the art world. It is nevertheless clearly apparent that Danish artists are rooted in their own tradition that is marked especially by the existential attitude and expressionistic manifestation that is the most important contribution, not only of Denmark, but of the whole of Scandinavia, to world art. It is an art that from its beginnings and throughout its development has been invigorated with the aid of considerable influence from France, while yet radically distinguishing itself from French art. Content and expression are of greater significance than form and aesthetic unity. In the light of this it is apparent that the breakthrough of abstract art is a more seeming than actual element of discontinuity in Danish art. There is more unification than separation between the art of J.Th. Lundbye and that of Asger Jorn, and both Egill Jacobsen and Lauritz Hartz often use colours, summer-green or winter-brown, adapted from the crisp and spontaneous tones in the Danish landscapes of the Eckersberg School. Jorn once said: "I and my colleagues are trying to be moderns on Danish foundations." H. E. Norregard-Nielsen Some museums Post-war Danish art can be seen in its international context at the Louisiana Gallery at Humlebaek, Zealand. There are also important collections at the State Museum of Art in Copenhagen and the museums of art at Arhus, Alborg and Randers, In recent years a museum has been opened at Herning especially devoted to the work of Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt, where there is also a gallery exhibiting a number of other important art works of the period. In 1981 a new art gallery was inaugurated at Holstebro housing sizeable collections of work by such artists as Heerup, Lauritz Hartz and Ejler Bille. A new building has just been erected at Silkeborg to accommodate the large collections of his own and other artists' work presented to the town by Asger Jorn. Bibliography Modern Danish art has been discussed in a number of monographs on individual leading artists and more comprehensively by Jens Jorgen Thorsen in Modernisme (Copenhagen, 1965), and in Dansk Kunsthistorie (History of Danish Art) (Politiken 1972-75, vols. 1-5). Also available in English, German and French: Vagn Poulsen and H.E. Norregard-Nielsen: Danish Painting and Sculpture (Det danske Selskab, Copenhagen, 1976).