Asger Jorn
CoBrA founder and Situationist, who bought other people's paintings and painted over them.
Asger Jorn was born in Jutland in 1914, studied with Leger in Paris, and was a founder of CoBrA in 1948 and later of the Situationist International with Guy Debord, from which he resigned in 1961 while continuing to fund it. He painted fast, thickly and with deliberate ugliness, in masks, beasts and half-formed faces. The Modifications of 1959 are the sharpest single idea: junk-shop paintings bought cheaply and overpainted, leaving enough of the original visible to make the argument. He founded the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism and died in 1973.
Prices are led by the CoBrA period and the late 1950s and early 1960s canvases. Jorn worked on a wide range of supports including hardboard, found paintings and unstretched canvas, and the paint is thick, unstable and often applied over unsuitable grounds, so structural condition and past restoration are unusually important. The Modifications carry an additional question about which parts are original to the found picture. He produced a very large printed output — lithographs, etchings, artist's books with Debord — and the Museum Jorn at Silkeborg holds the archive.
If you own a work by Asger Jorn
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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