Egill Jacobsen

Arne Suntorp, Helsingør

Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institute, Danish Abstract Art (travelling exhibition to 5 cities in the USA), 1964-65

Original canvas. There are no signs of retouching visible under ultraviolet light, and work is in very good overall condition and ready to hang. Held in a simple, narrow, gold-painted wood frame.
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Egill Jacobsen is widely credited as being the most formative influence on those at the forefront of Modernism in Denmark during the 1930s. It was Jacobsen's trip to Paris in 1935-36 and his exposure to the work of Picasso that opened his eyes. Like Picasso he became intensely interested in primitive mask forms (fig. 1). Unlike Picasso's masks, however, these were not based on an analysis of the real thing but appeared more like new creatures, created from the imagination. As evident in the bright acid palette of the present work, Jacobsen typically painted his mask compositions in vibrant colours often against a dark background. In so doing he lends these essentially impenetrable forms both a dramatic playfulness as well as a dark brooding inscrutability. 

FIG. 1: Mbangu mask, Bandundu, Zaïre