Lot 76 D

In 1950, Asger Jorn wrote to his Dutch painting colleague and COBRA companion Constant: “In fables and myths, one talks of monsters, of fantastical animals and signs. These are always symbols that people have made from real phenomena … folk art is always fantastic and symbolic […] It seems to me therefore as if the whole plant and animal world of symbolism should be completely reconstructed … One can only reach the truth by using one's fantasy for the most unbelievable pictures like those of Bosch and Breughel, but then in a pictorial language like the old Indians, Vikings, primitives and not in a surrealist-naturalistic language.” (Asger Jorn, quoted from: COBRA 1948-51, exhib.cat. Kunstverein Hamburg 1982, p.138)
An archaic pictorial language which the artist claims here is also deployed in the present work, painted ten years later. The title “Morgenrødt (Dawn)” suggests a theme that can certainly be found in the orange-coloured rays at the upper right corner of the picture and in the frequently used fiery red colouring. Furthermore, the composition remains manifoldly legible. A churned up, abstracted landscape appears just as possible as the raised head of an animal. In his works, Jorn dedicates himself to the mysterious and unknown, he strives for an ambiguity which cannot be resolved. In addition, he leaves plenty of room for chance in the painting process. Chance determines the work to the same extent as the conscious pictorial concept which underlies it.