Jørn Utzon's Art Collection

Le Corbusier’s Tapestry

One of the collection's undisputed highlights is a tapestry by Le Corbusier from 1960 entitled "Les dés sont jetés (The dice are cast). It was made while Utzon and Corbusier collaborated on the interior of the Sydney Opera House.

In a letter from 4 October 1960 the Utzon couple wrote a heartfelt greeting to Corbusier: ”For quite some time we have intended to write to you again in order to tell you how extremely happy we are for your wonderful tapestry. It is a daily source of delight and beauty not only for ourselves and our children but for all our friends and guests, too. It has endowed our home with a beauty so exquisite that I am at a loss for the proper words to describe our feelings about it. (…)

From Great French Artists to Asger Jorn

Utzon was greatly inspired by French art, and, as you can see at the auction, he purchased works by Georges Braque and Fernand Léger for his private collection, which took shape during the 1950-60s. Among the items up for auction you can also find a clay figure by Henri Laurens. The figure was given to the Utzon couple as a gift from the artist himself during a trip to Paris.

Pablo Picasso was also a source of great fascination for the Danish architect who visited Picasso’s studio in the south of France with his wife and children. There are several Picasso-works in the collection, including graphic works and a beautiful ceramic pitcher, "Pichet gothique aux oiseaux", from 1953. Utzon’s collection also contains Danish art. Asger Jorn, for instance, gave Utzon 16 lithographs from his "Anniversary Series" (1963), because Utzon had designed an extension of the art museum in Silkeborg, which was to house the works of Jorn. All of the lithographs are up for auction.

The Story of Jørn Utzon and the Sydney Opera House

Utzon graduated as an architect in 1942. His career gathered momentum, when he in 1957 won the international architectural competition for the Sydney Opera House. The next several years he worked on the century's most famous building, and everything went according to plan until the change of government in Australia in 1965.

The opera house's exterior was finished, and Utzon was about to begin work on the interior. He had plans to decorate the opera with tapestries by Le Corbusier, whom Utzon had worked with since 1958. But the new governing party in the Australian parliament wanted the building finished quickly and cheaply. Therefore, they suspended the payments to Jørn Utzon, who withdrew from the construction in 1966. Australian architects completed the construction, and the Sydney Opera House was completed in 1973 without Utzon's stamp on the interior design and the planned decorations by Le Corbusier.

In 2003 Jørn Utzon received, as the first Dane, the Nobel Prize for architecture, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In the statement accompanying the award the president of the jury, Lord Rothschild, referenced Utzon's talent in general and the Sydney Opera House in particular. The building was include on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2007 - the year before Utzon died at the age of 90.

Presentations during the Preview

On the opening day of the preview on 28 May Frederik Bruun Rasmussen will welcome guests at 4 pm, after which the British architect and Professor Richard Weston will give the lecture "Inspiration, Vision, Architecture" about Jørn Utzon.

Auction: 9 - 11 June at Bredgade 33 in Copenhagen
Preview: 28 May - 1 June at the same address

See the assortment from the collection

See the entire selection of the auction

Read more about the auction and download the catalogues