Asger Jorn

Asger Jorn would remain a highly significant figure in the history of art even if we somehow did not have a record of his remarkable paintings. In the 1950s, he co-founded two of the most dynamic and influential art movements of the twentieth century: CoBrA, whose name combines the first letters of its founders’ native cities – Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam – and, with French philosopher Guy Debord, of the Situationist International. But thankfully we do have vivid paintings such as Promenade des amoureux, which was created with intensity at the height of Jorn’s activities in the 1950s. Although this painting was exhibited widely in Europe, Jorn’s work was not exhibited in the USA until 1962, well after the eclipse of American Abstract Expressionism, with which it has both affinities in presentation and sharp contrasts in purpose. With Promenade des amoureux, we have a renewed opportunity to rethink the historical and aesthetic potency of the history of Expressionist painting and its possibilities in the present.