Asger Jorn (1914-1973)

Far from working solely with paint, Jorn was exceptionally versatile. In addition to ceramics, tapestries and graphic design, he also created several so-called décollages, most of which were executed in Paris in the wake of Spring 1968. They consist of straps of paper torn off from billboards, sometimes including letters and images. Common for them all, they possess a revolutionary character fuelled by their historical significance. Expressive and spontaneously abstract, their layers create a dynamic rhythm of vibrant protest against the establishment.
Guy Atkins says about these works: "When the décollages succeed, they dazzle with their colour and impress with their presence, a quality inherent in the nature of the material used. The paper is thick. When torn it has a three-dimensionality like that of impastoed paint and the ragged edges work like brushstrokes. Jorn exploits the sunstantiality of the paper to the full and also cleverly exploits the various kinds of printing, so that flat, rich colours contrast with a glossy surface, with bold fragments of script or the dense screen dots used in the colour reproduction technique. Sometimes fragments or larger images emerge which acquire new meaning from the new context." (G. Atkins, Asger Jorn. The final years 1965-1973, London 1980, p. 72).