“Jorn – Nitsch” is the first exhibition at the nitsch museum Mistelbach 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.

Jorn’s and Nitsch’s paintings are characterized by sensual power, physical commitment and materiality. With his action paintings from the early 1960s onwards, 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.

Florian Steininger, the artistic director of the Kunsthalle Krems, is the curator of this exhibition. At the same time, a Hermann Nitsch Personale, will be shown at Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, curated by its senior curator Lucas Haberkorn. The two arthistorians will meet with other experts for a panel discussion at the nitsch museum in September at the nitsch museum.

The opening ceremony for the exhibition “Jorn – Nitsch” will take place on Saturday, June 8, 2024 at 6 pm. Registration is kindly requested anmeldung@nitschmuseum.at