Life, Landscapes and a Tractor

Jorn’s Joie de Vivre

Jorn (1914-73) became particularly well known after his period between 1948-51 with the CoBrA movement, where the ground breaking spontaneous abstract idiom was created. The artists' common starting point was a resistance towards high culture. Based on the imagination and the unconscious they worked to create a free and anti-aesthetic art that could speak directly to the audience. Jorn maintained these dogmas throughout his life and often worked with universal subjects such as life, death and love.

Joie de Vivre was a theme to which he returned again and again, but throughout the 1960s a gloomier mood dominated his art. At this auction, we present the major piece "La Joie d'être" (The Joy of Being) from 1969, which according to historian of ideas Lars Morell is one of the only paintings from Jorn's later period where the unreserved joy of life is expressed.

Kirkeby’s Landscapes

Just as Jorn, Per Kirkeby (b. 1938) is one of the Danish art world's greatest names. At our previous international auction we sold one of his large paintings from the island of Læsø for DKK 1.6 million, which is a world record. Like Jorn, Kirkeby has a strong connection with the island's beautiful scenery and the omnipresent sea. Kirkeby has spent long periods of his life on the island, and he painted a significant portion of his paintings there. At this auction we can present one of these works from 1999 in which Kirkeby’s geological background and penchant for natural references cannot be denied. The auction also includes two works from the series "Herbst-Anastasia", which he created a few years later, and which in his own words is a tribute to the melancholy Queen of Autumn.

Otte’s Tractor

Danish contemporary art is currently held in very high regard on the international scene. One of the artists responsible for this is Allan Otte (b. 1978), who brings the viewer into a universe of damaged vehicles and deserted landscapes. The scenes always appear without drama, with no traces of injuries, blood or rescue operations, and this lack of narrative makes the works difficult to decode. In "Stuck in the Middle" from 2005 a blue Ford tractor has gotten itself well and truly stuck in the mud. At a first glance the painting seems photorealistic, but if you look closer, the realistic representation dissolves into structures of visible brush strokes and layer-upon-layer of paint. Otte’s continuous interplay between sharpness and blurriness is clearly defined here, and the background fades out as an airbrush-obscured view of a deserted and almost desolate Danish landscape.

Preview: 25-29 February in Bredgade 33 in Copenhagen

Auction: 8 March at 4 pm at the same address

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