Jørgen was only 27 years old, when he was invited to show at the prestigious Galleria del Naviglio in Milan in 1961. The Gallery was run by Carlo Cadazzo, to whom Jorgen was introduced by his friend Asger Jorn.
The yellow folder, made for the exhibition, with Jorgens CV and a text by the arthistorian Garibaldi Marussi, is translated by Cher Lewis.
346 Mostra del Naviglio dal 25 novembre al 5 dicembre 1961 Galleria del Naviglio - Via Manzoni 45 - Milano.
CV 1961
JORGEN HAUGEN SORENSEN was born in Copenhagen in 1934. He exhibited for the first time in 1953 at the "Charlottenborg’s Spring Exhibition, Copenhagen" and later, in 1954, at the Artists’ autumn exhibition. In 1956 he participated with the” Artist’s Society Decembristerne", Copenhagen and in 1958 he held his first solo exhibition at "Athenaeum", Copenhagen and participated in the Venice Biennale. I 1959 he produced group exhibitions in Paris, Holland, Austria, Sweden and Norway. In 1961 shows were held at Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and at the IV Competition Internazionale del Bronzetto in Padua.
This is Haugen Sorensen’s first solo exhibition in Italy.
His works have been purchased by foundations and museums: in 1956, "The New Carlsberg Foundation"; (Aalborg Museum) and "Generalinde Koefoed Fond"; (Louisiana); in 1958, "The New Carlsberg Foundation"; (Odense Museum) and The National Gallery of Denmark, (Copenhagen); in 1959, Helsingborg Museum (Sweden) and the "New Carlsberg Foundation"; in 1960 a commission for Glostrup Town Hall, purchased by ”The New Carlsberg Foundation". He won the New Carlsberg Foundation's large prize" and the prize in memory of the sculptor Kai Nielsen. Lives and works in Italy, in Verona.
Text by arthistorian Garibaldi Marussi.
A painting is not a construction, but an animal, a night, a man or all of this together. This definition, obtained from the declarations of the Cobra group, at the time of its constitution, can easily be applied to the sculpture of Jorgen Haugen Sorensen. Not only for its elective affinities in the origin manifesto where everything is proved. The Cobra group was born in 1948 and gave life to the artists Appel, Jorn, Corneille and Alechinsky. Cobra, as is known, was the sum of the initials of the cities of origin of the individual artists: Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Behind those young people was the North. There was modern expressionism, with a pinch of the surreal: with Bosch and Brueghel and monsters. In another with the mutations that time naturally implies. Sorensen is affected by that climate and yet, I would say, he distances himself from it. His neo-expressionism, and this is what it is, has collusions with a world that goes beyond reality itself. Certain turgidities, certain involutions of matter, certain fattenings on the other hand, are not accidental. They are not born, meaning, from the "crushing" technique, for which César exploits randomness with extreme taste, but from a desire to structure both planes and volumes. The laceration of reality, carried out by the suggestion of the memory of the expressionist world, dilatation, the fury of the impetus, the uncontrolled revolt, are transformed by Sorensen into a calm examination of the qualities and possibilities of the material for the purpose of a symbolic representation; sometimes an end in itself. How convincing is the measure of the young sculptor in the exploitation of his own expressive abilities; an intense love for one's craft. The castings are accurate, the patina is lovingly dosed, and the ratio of the proportions carefully established. Essentially Sorensen's resolutions do not consist only in the creation of an object for itself, we must return to the statements of the Cobra group, the object needs to bear the signs of the effort that generated it. An assumption, let's confess it, which is not a slight one.
Garibaldi Marussi (Fiume, 5 September 1909 - Trieste, 3 August 1973), was an Italian writer, poet, art critic, scholar, translator, journalist and art historian.