The Dane Asger Oluf Jørgensen was born in Vejrum, Jutland, in 1914. In 1945 he changed his name to Asger Jorn. As a boy Jorn had received private instruction in painting, and from 1938 to 1939 he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. For a time Jorn was a member of the Communist Party. From 1946 on he spent increasing amounts of time in Paris, and it was there, in 1948, that he established the international group CoBrA with artist colleagues. It was envisioned as a movement in opposition to America’s Abstract Expressionism. In 1953 Jorn left Denmark for good, from then on living in Switzerland and northern Italy. In the years 1959 and 1964 he took part in documenta 2 and 3. In his last years he concentrated on printmaking, but also experimented with sculpture in marble and bronze. Jorn died in Aarhus in 1973.
