Asger Jorn: Luck and Chance

September 21, 2025, through August 16, 2026

Asger Jorn, Individuum Ineffable (Ineffable Personality), 1966, Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 21.7 x 18.5 in (55.2 x 46.9 cm), NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale; Cobra Collection; gift of Golda and Meyer Marks M-98.30. © 2025 Donation Jorn, Silkeborg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VISDA; Photograph by Angelika Rinnhofer

This presentation of graphic works by Asger Jorn (1914–1973) celebrates the artist’s lifelong dedication to printmaking and experiments with paper, comprehensively represented in NSU Art Museum’s collection. Offering a focused view of Jorn’s oeuvre, the exhibition reflects his restless and prolific nature, intuitive skill as a colorist and commitment to shared discovery. The exhibition presents a cross-section of Jorn’s life spanning his entire career from his earliest provocative works at age 19 for the Marxist journal Frem (Forward), up to his final series, Die Geschichte vom teuren Brot (The Story of Expensive Bread), a suite of color lithographs illustrating a story by Halldór Laxness. It also recounts the artist’s early embrace by American institutions, which exhibited and acquired his prints ahead of those in his native Denmark—support that proved critical during his battle with tuberculosis that resulted in the dissolution of the CoBrA (Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam) group. NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale houses the largest collection in the United States of CoBrA art, an international, transdisciplinary collective art movement dating from 1948-1951.