"Jorn - Nitsch" is the first exhibition at the nitsch museum in which Hermann Nitsch's artistic work is juxtaposed with a second position. Alongside Karel Appel and Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn (1914 Vejrum - Aarhus 1973, Denmark) is one of the best-known protagonists of the CoBrA group, one of the leading avant-garde movements of the post-war period in Europe, which advocated originality and freedom in art. At the same time, Hermann Nitsch will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Museum Jorn, Silkeborg.
The greatest similarities between the two artists can be found in the mythical-cultic and gestural-material aspects of their painting. Asger Jorn thematizes Nordic culture, the "vandalic" in the form of archaic paintings, drawings and sculptures. Jorn's artistic exploration of the Celtic in the Northern European cultural sphere of prehistory forms a bridge to the neighboring MAMUZ Museum Mistelbach. Nitsch delves into the spiritual Dionysian world of intoxication, ecstasy, eroticism, pain, destruction and ultimately resurrection. Protestant north meets catholic-baroque Weinviertel.
"Jorn-Nitsch" © Jorn Museum
Jorn's and Nitsch's painting is characterized by sensual power, physical commitment and materiality. With his action paintings and Schüttbilder from the early 1960s, the Viennese actionist had decisively expanded the panel painting and defined it as a preliminary stage to his Orgien Mysterien Theater. Above all, his late painterly work is filled with gestural discharges of impasto materiality and strong coloration. Jorn draws from the unconscious beyond the rational world and creates hybrid-organic form overgrowths that dissolve into an abstract painting substance.
A further parallel can be found in the use of drawing and the primacy of the line, whether Jorn's archaic-childlike cephalopods and human-animal creations or Nitsch's anatomically and organically influenced architectural notations in his graphic work.
From June 9, 2024
www.nitschmuseum.at
