18 November 2024by Eli Benveniste - Jørgen Haugen Sørensen Archive

Jorgen Haugen Sorensen (Danish, born 1934). Portrait De Monsieur Trompe De Brume, 1960.
Terracotta, 35 7/16 x 29 1/2 in. (90 x 74.9 cm).
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. G. David Thompson, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
Like Peter Voulkos, Sørensen, who had trained as a potter, explored the sculptural possibilities of clay in the postwar era. In 1959 and 1960, he created a series of "pipe sculptures" on the island of Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, where he had access to the factory-made ceramic pipe molds. He assembled these cylindrical forms into free-standing sculptures, his first exploration of abstraction .These dynamic works have an affinity with gestural abstraction seen in the work of many CoBrA-affiliated artists such as Carl-Henning Pedersen.

18 November 2024

It has been three years since Jorgen died. This morning, a message from Benjo, Jorgens assistant, through the last five years of his life, greets me on WhatsApp photos of “Tågehornet” also called “Portrait De Monsieur Trompe De Brume” from 1960, is on display at the Eskenazi Museum of Art, at the Indiana University, where it had been given to the Museum, by the art collector Mr. and Mrs. G. David Thompson.

It almost felt like a greeting from Jorgen himself – to receive this message, from the other side of the world, just when I lately have been writing about Jorgens tube or pipe sculptures – what a coincidence – especially today.

I knew that Jorgen had sold a tube sculpture to MoMa, which is still in their collection, a gift from the same Mr. and Mrs. G. David Thompson. What I didn’t know was that he also had bought the “Portrait De Monsieur Trompe De Brume” and apparently had given it to this museum in Bloomington, Indiana.
Thank you Pilar, (visiting your father at Indiana University), who sent the photos to Benjo, who forwarded them to me – today.

Eli Benveniste