The Scream, 1961

Asger Jorn  

Asger Jorn, born Asger Oluf Jørgensen on March 3, 1914 in Vejrum in Central Jutland and died on May 1, 1973 in Aarhus, is a Danish painter. He was one of the founders of the CoBrA movement and of the Situationist International. In 1936, Asger Jorn arrived in Paris to join the Contemporary Academy of Fernand Léger. There he meets the French Pierre Wemaëre with whom he binds a deep friendship.

During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Jorn was an active communist in the resistance and participated in the artistic group Høst. He was one of the founders of the CoBrA movement in 1948. The same year he joined the Dutch artist group Experimentele Groep in Holland founded by Karel Appel, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Corneille, Theo Wolvecamp, Anton Rooskens Jan Nieuwenhuys and many Dutch artists.

He merged the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, which he had founded in 1955, the Lettrist International and the London Psychogeographical Committee, into a single unified movement: the Situationist International in 1957.

In 1961, he left the SI to found the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism (see La Langue verte et la Cuite, with Noël Arnaud, which earned him the title of Commander Exquis of the Order of the Great Gidouille).