Jorgen Haugen Sorensen
Selected Bio & Artist Statement
With Jørgen Haugen Sørensens extensive activities, which spanned sculpture, relief, ceramic tablets, drawings, lithography and film, he participated in several international group exhibitions and biennials and was awarded many distinctions, including the lifetime grant of the Danish Arts Foundation. He did countless commissions, redefined city spaces, squares and parks, erected enormous sculptures in capitals such as Seoul, Ankara and Rome, and decorated numerous official institutions - notably the Copenhagen Courthouse in 2013. Among his solo exhibitions we can mention: 1961 Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, Italy (1963) Galleria Ariel, Paris, France; (1964) Louisiana, Humlebæk; (1976) Foundation of Sonja Henie and Niels Onstads, Høvikodden, Norway; (1980) The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek of Copenhagen; (1983) Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, USA; (1983) City of Prato, Italy; (1983) San José Museum of Art, California, USA; (1991) Halkbank Sanart Galerisi, Ankara, and Dolmebache Palace, Istanbul, Turkey; 1993 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England; Silent Witness (1999), Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; While We Wait (2007), National Gallery of Denmark; Justitio and the Witnesses (2014), Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen; The Crowd (2017), Pietrasanta, Italy, and Time meets Time (2019) at the Willumsens Museum, Denmark. His work is represented in the collections of museums in Denmark and abroad, among other Louisiana, Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus; KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield. Jørgen Haugen Sørensen was awarded the Eckersberg Medal in 1969 and the Thorvaldsen Medal in 1979; the highest national honor a Danish artist can achieve.
Jørgen Haugen Sørensen, born in Copenhagen in 1934 and died in Pietrasanta November 2021, was one of Denmark’s most esteemed and decorated sculptors. Since the age of 19 he lived and worked in various European metropoles such as Paris, Verona and Barcelona. In 1971 he moved to Pietrasanta in Tuscany, Italy, which has served as his primary residence ever since.
Throughout his entire artistic career he consistently and independently focused his attention of the human condition in society. Since his debut in 1953 he shifted, without any formal training or schooling, effortlessly between materials and modes of expression within the sculptural sphere, and mastered each transformation with continuous success. In a continuous line towards abstraction, Haugen Sørensen engaged with the Portuguese granite for more than 25 years, and created some of his most significant and monumental public sculptures for cities and landscapes throughout Europe and the US, before he in the late 90s returned to a more direct sculpturing in clay, and in his last years expressive bronze sculpture that was modelled up in clay.