Asger Jorn "Happy pigs", 1962. Signed Jorn. Oil on canvas. 81 x 65 cm. Literature: Guy Atkins: "Asger Jorn. The Crucial Years: 1954-1964", London, 1977, no. 1421. Exhibited: "Asger Jorn", Lefebre Gallery, New York 1962, cat. no. 18. The artist's first solo show in America. Provenance: Mr. Jon Nicholas Streep, Asger Jorn's first art dealer in New York. In continuation of the celebration of Asger Jorn's 100th anniversary in 2014, which included major exhibitions and publications, a movement has begun with the stated goal of nuancing Jorn's multifaceted efforts in relation to the - in Denmark - confidential CoBrA-narrative. Asger Jorn is widely regarded as a beacon within European post-war expressionism, but he was, due to his energy and his dedication and commitment to artistic development, much more than this: author, organizer, situationist, activist and avant-gardist. In the book "The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn - the Avant-Garde Won?t Give Up" (2014), the American art historian Karen Kurczynski is concerned with the complexity and contradictions of Jorn. For instance that "he is completely marginalized in the United States (...)" (Tom Hermansen: "Asger Jorn: wild, political and manic" in "SMK#7", the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen 2014). Kurczynski?s book places Jorn in an overlapping area between the European Art Informel, tachisme and lyrical abstraction AND The New Yorker School?s abstract expressionism from the 1950s and 1960s: "Like the Informal artists, Jorn has been overshadowed by the New York School, with which he shares common ground (...) Not only did Cobra predate the widespread recognition of Abstract Expressionism in Europe, but it's techniques of spontaneous composition, grotesque semi-figuration, and a primitivist approach to gestural painting - all elements shared with the New York School ? developed directly out of the explorations of the earlier Helhesten group in Denmark during the war "(Kurczynski p. 10). In the catalogue for Asger Jorn's first solo exhibition at the Lefebre Gallery in New York in 1962 ? where the piece "Happy pigs" was exhibited - the art historian Werner Haftmann highlights Jorn in "the general panorama of Western art?. Haftmann also directly highlights the simultaneousness and similarity in the European and American trends regarding the spontaneous expressive method. Jorn?s "Happy pigs" is with its energetic, vibrant brushstrokes a highly distinctive piece from the period in which layers upon layers of colours can at once be seen as a figuration as well as witnessing the pure physical energy of the act of painting. Estimate in DKK : 800000 / 0