Literature: Guy Atkins: “Asger Jorn: The crucial years 1954–1964”, London, 1977, no. 941, ill. (with wrong measurement and date). Provenance: Private Collection, USA. Probably acquired directly from the artist by the present owner's parents. Not previously offered for sale.

After his solo exhibition at the Galleria d'Arte del Naviglio in Milan in 1955, Jorn raised funds the same year to buy an apartment in Paris. With this, he is back in the city where, two decades earlier, he began his artistic schooling in earnest with Fernand Léger. Although Jorn has already had a leading role in the founding of CoBrA, he knows that he can only really establish a name for himself once he has gained a foothold in the city of cities. It is important that he is represented by the right gallery and crucial that he gets to exhibit in several European metropolises. The sale of “The witches of Pozzo Garitta” to the collector Henri Lezard, as well as proceeds from Galerie Birch, ensures a few months of peace to focus on work and secure the important agreement with Galerie Rive Gauche. The artwork for the first solo exhibition must be ready in June 1957, and it is crucial that Jorn gets into a good flow. A characteristic trait of this period is the marked materiality with which Jorn constructs his works. The parallel work with the ceramics in Albisola is also significant – it seems to be the same powerful source from which these works grow.

The title of the work can be interpreted in several ways: The blacksmith as a mythological tamer of the primordial power of fire: a creator who, like the artist, processes the liquid matter and provides it with form and expression. The blindness should hardly be understood as something negative, but rather as a recognition of an unstoppable creative urge and power: Despite limitations, the artistic drive does not allow itself to be slowed down: the work of the hand and the spirit merge in a gigantic effort of power and become a new type of plasticity. Whether the expression comes to life as sculptures, ceramics, prints, collages or paintings is a technicality. Jorn's world is rich with an enormous creative drive, which in the same year manifests itself in the main work “Lettre à mon fils” (Letter to my son) and the initial work on “Stalingrad”. “Lettre à mon fils” in particular has many points of similarities with the work up for auction: Separate figures with clearly marked eyes, alertly eyeing each other – clear references to the energy between people and the restless dynamism of creativity.

Another interpretation that seems inevitable is the reference to Norse mythology, which is a recurring frame of reference in Jorn's work: the blacksmith and the god of thunder, Thor, the symbol of ultimate drive and virility. Thor's role was, in a broader sense, to be the protector of the gods and men against destructive forces of nature, which ensured that the constant threat of the destruction of the cosmos did not materialize. As the god of fertility, Thor and the reference to the mute myth seem to be an obvious visual allegory and suggestion of an alter ego, with whom the omnipotent and unstoppable Jorn identifies with in this period: An artist who has direct contact with the basic elements of fire, earth and water and in virtuoso fashion unite these in an unavoidable and significant artistic form.