Aksel Jørgensen

At the age of four, Jørgensen became seriously ill with an otitis media, the long-term consequences of which affected his entire life.

A boy of the same age, whose father was a master painter, gave him a small wooden box with powder paints.

There he met an art dealer of the same age, Martin Grosell, who bought some of his paintings and promised to buy more works in the future.

During the weeks of illness, the decision matured to only live with, for and from art in the future, which he implemented after returning from the hospital against the will of his parents.

During this time Jacob Hegel, director of the largest Danish publishing house Gyldendahl, commissioned Jørgensen to conduct milieu studies specifically for “Holmensgade”, a slum in the old town of Copenhagen.

In 1909 he exhibited with "De Tretten", the artist group "The Thirteen", presenting his favorite subjects of prostitutes and destitute people living in demolished buildings in the poorest neighborhoods of Copenhagen, thereby attracting press attention.

He is also known for his engravings, which are characterized by large areas of light and shadow and the use of wood grain, as in his portrait of the writer Jens Pedersen (1908).

Together with Storm P. he founded the socially critical satirical magazine Gnisten (the spark) in 1908 and published some of his sketches.

In 1912 the famous Danish art collector and successful grain trader Christian Tetzen-Lund commissioned numerous works for the dining room of his villa.

The conflict caused Jørgensen to have a nervous breakdown, fell into a deep four-year creative crisis and withdrew strongly.

His most extensive project were around 50 illustrations for Adam Oehlenschläger's work Nordens Guder (Gods of the North), which he began in 1914 and completed in 1928.

Proofs of the large work (A3 format, 40 pages) were shown at the 1925 World Exhibition in Paris.In 1930, ten years after his appointment as professor, Jørgensen was unanimously elected director of the Academy.

The family moved into their unusually spacious official residence in Charlottenborg Palace right next to the Royal Theater.

In his function as director of the academy, Jørgensen met the leading painters of the 20th century, such as Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Otto Dix and Emil Nolde along with his Danish wife Ada.

He encouraged his students to observe trends across Europe and emphasized the importance of lines and geometric figures.

Jørgensen was also an unorthodox teacher who avoided the complex admissions process at the academy early on and accepted applicants as students based on the work submitted to him.

The students were both models and helpers with the work that had to be done in the studio.Jørgensen was a lifelong socialist and advocate of general art, not just the beautiful.

"Jeg ønsker ingen gardiner mellem mig og tilværelsen"[4] "I don't want curtains between me and life."

Here, too, Jørgensen repeatedly took up motifs from the poor district of Holmensgade in Copenhagen, about which he also made many oil paintings at the same time.

It was he who took the initiative to integrate the graphics school as part of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and it was his work there which attracted important illustrators such as Henry Heerup, Richard Mortensen, Ib Spang Olsen, and many others.