The Open Hide offers a concise overview of the diverse accomplishments of Danish artist Asger Jorn. The volume comprises over 75 images of Jorn's work, each with complete provenance, exhibition and literature history. A comprehensive biography of the artist is also included, along with photographs and other archival material.
For Jorn, who was aligned with the CoBrA movement and later the Situationist International, art was an expression of life, of activism, of an unedited freedom not confined to studio practice. “An Asger Jorn can be garish, florid, tasteless, forced, cute, flatulent, overemphatic; it can never be vulgar,” wrote art historian T.J. Clark, who once declared Jorn “the greatest painter of the 1950s.” As the CoBrA artists undergo widespread critical reassessment, this volume helps to retrieve and contextualize Jorn's significance.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Petzel Gallery, New York, from May 5 to August 29, 2016.
Founding member of CoBrA and Situationist International movements, Danish painter, sculptor, and ceramic artist Asger Jorn (1914-1973) is one of the major figures of the post-war avant-garde, whose work can be characterized by its artistic and political radicalism.
