Alfred Jensen

For other people with the same name, seeAlfred Jensen (disambiguation).

Alfred Jensen
Born	December 11, 1903 Guatemala City,Guatemala
Died	April 4, 1981(1981-04-04)(aged 77) Livingston, New Jersey
Nationality	Guatemalan, American
Education	Hans HofmannMunich, Academie Scandinave Paris, Charles Dufresne,Othon Friesz,Charles Despiau
Notable work	Great Pyramid,1979, a twelve-panel masterpiece
Movement	Abstract art
Spouse	Regina Bogat
Patron(s)	Saidie May
Website	www.alfredjensen.com

Alfred Julio Jensen(11 December 1903 – 4 April 1981) was an abstract painter. His paintings are often characterized by grids of brightly colored triangles, circles or squares, painted in thickimpasto.Conveying a complex web of ideas, often incorporating calligraphy or numerical systems, they are frequently referred to as "concrete" abstract art.After his death in 1981, theGuggenheimorganized a major retrospective of his work, having held his solo exhibition there in 1961.

Biography

Alfred Jensen was born inGuatemala City,Guatemala,on December 11, 1903. His father Peter was aDanishentrepreneur, and his mother Anna a German-Polish governess working for a French family. Upon his mother's death in 1910, the seven-year-old was sent toHørsholm,Denmark, to live with his uncle. After graduating from elementary school in Denmark in 1917, Jensen traveled extensively working as a ship'scabin boy—drawing portraits of the passengers and crew. Between 1921 and 1923, he worked as a cowboy and chicken farmer betweenSan Diegoand then Guatemala, before returning to San Diego. There he worked as a lumber salesman, while attendingSan Diego High Schoolat night and then receiving a scholarship to the San Diego Fine Arts School atBalboa Park.

In 1926, he traveled toMunich,Germany, to study underHans Hofmann,an abstract expressionist painter who trained numerous well-known artists at his schools in Germany and the United States. There he met fellow studentSaidie Adler May,a wealthy art collector. For the next 34 years, she was a patron of his work, and he accompanied her in extensive travels, together studying the masters throughout Europe and collecting works by artists such asPaul Klee,Wassily Kandinsky,Theo van Doesburg,William Baziotes,Jackson Pollock,Robert Motherwell,Naum GaboandFritz Glarner.In 1951, upon her death, the collection was divided among theBaltimore Museum of Art,San Diego Museum of Artand theMuseum of Modern Artin New York.

In 1929, he moved to Paris to study at the Academie Scandinave, learning modern sculpture underCharles Despiau,and painting underOthon FrieszandCharles Dufresne,who becomes Jensen's "spiritual and painter-father."

He moved to the US in 1934, continuing to travel and study with Saidie May, while advising her collecting. Around 1945, he began his 20-year study ofGoethe'sZür Farbenlehre,the poet's views on the nature of colours and how they are perceived by humans—considered an origination of Color Theory.In 1951, he settled in New York, opening a studio in theLincoln Arcade,and began to paint in anabstract expressioniststyle.

Throughout his life, Jensen met and collaborated with many already or subsequently influential artists, most notablyMark Rothko,Sam Francis,Jean Dubuffet,Joan Miró,andAllan Kaprow,and held exhibitions with contemporaries includingUlfert Wilke,Robert Becker, Sally Hazelet,Franz Kline,Joseph Cornell,Willem de KooningandRobert Rauschenberg.A well traveled citizen of the world, he spoke five languages and similarly refused to settle into any one artistic movement, remaining a challenge to categorize—as noted byPeter Schjeldahlin his essay "Jensen’s Difficulty".

In 1963, at the age of 60, he married fellow abstract painterRegina Bogat.They traveled and painted together for six months in Italy, Egypt, Greece, France and Switzerland, then had a daughter, Anna in 1965, and son Peter in 1970, finally moving toGlen Ridge, New Jersey,in 1972. Alfred Jensen died on April 4, 1981, inLivingston, New Jersey.

Works

Twelve Events in a Dual Universe,1978, oil on canvas

Upon the death ofSaidie Mayin 1951, Jensen settled in New York and began to focus exclusively on painting, out of his Lincoln Arcade studio. Here he first gained the attention ofJames Johnson Sweeney,director of the Guggenheim Museum. His first solo exhibition of twelve canvases was held in 1952 at the John Heller Gallery,including portraits, still life, landscapes and figures in an abstract expressionist style, influenced by his studies of Goethe's color theory, with a palette of prismatic colors.Around this time, he began what would be long friendships with painterMark Rothkoand art criticLil Picard.This was followed by his first solo show at the Tanager Gallery in 1955, the same year he began to exchange ideas withSam Francis.In 1957, he started to incorporatecheckerboardsin his prismatic colored murals, and in diagrams and paintings on paper. He also began to investigate his compositional logic, includingcalligraphy,and became extremely prolific. Henry Luce III, son of the founder ofTimemagazine,first collected his work, eventually commissioning a mural for the Time/Life building in Paris in 1959.

Around 1960 Jensen readMaya Hieroglyphic Writing,byJ. Eric S. Thompson,which linked to his childhood in Guatemala, and would prove to be a theme in much of his subsequent work. In 1961 he was the subject of a major solo show at theGuggenheim Museum,and his work was included in important group and solo exhibitions in the United States, Switzerland and Germany. By 1963, his work begins "superimposing figurative elements of prismatic colors on checkerboards of black and white or, reversely, figurative elements in black and white against a prismatic colored checkerboard."

For much of the mid to late 1960s, he traveled nearly continuously, notably becoming inspired by ancient Greek architecture, resulting inA Pythagorean Notebook,incorporatingPythagorean numberseries on top of grid structures, and developed an interest in astronomy, physics and Chinese history (notably theI Ching) - all of which would influence his next several years of work.Beginning with the Pythagorean lithographs, he was one of a number of artists in the 1960s working with serial images.

By the mid 1970s, he became interested in ancient number systems, magnetism and planetary effects on seasons, which became themes of his subsequent paintings.

Exhibitions and collections

Honor Pythagoras, Per I-Per VI(1964),Smithsonian American Art Museum

During his life, a museum retrospective of Jensen's work was organized by theAlbright–Knox Art Galleryin Buffalo, New York, and traveled to five other American museums in 1978, concluding at theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

"The retrospective was especially welcome for the way it let us see how all themes, all systems, are foreshadowed and aftshadowed, interlinked in unlooked-for ways with other systems, treated from different angles and in different graphic formats from work to work across the 20 years the show encompassed." -Peter Perrin, Arts Canada.

Museum exhibitions after his death include major retrospectives by:

• TheSolomon R. Guggenheim Museumin New York in 1985

"(This show) is devoted to an artist whose following is only beginning to emerge and whose true importance for twentieth-century painting seems to us to be no more than foreshadowed." -Thomas M. Messer, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

• TheDia Center for the Artsin 2001-2002

"Jensen's highly respected but rarely seen paintings elaborate his comsological theories, drawing on the sciences of astronomy, physics, and mathematics, and frequently involving Mayan and Chinese calendrical systems. Included are large-scale multi-part paintings that span the artist's mature career beginning in 1960. Among the highlights of the exhibition isGreat Pyramid(1980), a key late work never before exhibited publicly. "

• TheSanta Monica Museum of Artin 2003

"Active since the early 1950s, Jensen discovered his mature artistic voice in 1960, after repudiating abstract expressionist form and color in favor of an art based exclusively on the diagram. In such key works asCycle Ending,Per I-V(1960) andParthenon(1962), Jensen developed the parameters of a vision that would define his work over the next twenty years: signs from Mayan calendrical and numerical systems, palette from Goethian color theory, and patterns echoing Guatemala’s landscape, architecture, and textiles. "-from the exhibition overview

His work is held in numerous public collections including theMuseum of Modern Art,Albright-Knox Art Gallery,Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum,Art Gallery of Western Australia,Baltimore Museum of Art,Dallas Museum of Art,Dia Center for the Arts,theGovernor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collectionin Albany, New York,Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,Los Angeles County Museum of Art,Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,National Gallery of Art,San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,Smithsonian InstitutionandWhitney Museum of American Art.

The Alfred Jensen Estate is represented by thePace Gallery,New York.

References

• Marika Herskovic,American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s: An Illustrated Survey.New York School Press (2003)ISBN0-9677994-1-4,pp. 178–181

External links

• Official websiteArchived2008-02-18 at theWayback Machine
• The Pace Gallery