JAN HOLGER JERICHAU - SCULPTURE

18 Jan - 24 May 2020

Jan Holger Jerichau (1937-2019) was a sculptor. He worked with sculpture in many different materials - in recent years mainly in wood. Starting from the abstract he became more imaginative over the years: Beings and symbols emerge from the carved wood, where the surface is often worked with color, wax or coated with gold leaf. Jan Holger Jerichau was the fourth generation of the Jerichau artist family and lived with the legacy of the art his ancestors had created.

Jan Jan Holger Jerichau became a trained painter when he was young and in the years 1967-77 he was a student of sculptor and graphic artist Gunnar Hossy. He began his artistic career as a painter and graphic artist and, inspired by Gunnar Hossy, switched to work with collages. The early works often revealed strong mental tension complexes. He was not unmoved by being the fourth member of the Jerichau genus. On the one hand, he had inherited the sensibility that lay in the genus and which resulted in the fact that many in the genus chose the art as a life course. On the other hand, the legacy was also heavy - as strong expressions and works of art by members of the genus and as a pressure, an ambition to go the same way.

Around 1982 he began to work directly in plaster with larger sculptures, whose design language is related to the spontaneous-abstract tradition in Danish sculpture, for example Ejler Bille and Sonja Ferlov Mancoba. Some he got cast in bronze.

After working with the plaster, wood became his favorite material for the rest of his career. His wood sculptures are carefully carved and worked with color and wax, gold leaf or other elements. They appear as refined and simple symbols: totem-like, organic and ornamental.

The exhibition opens with a conducted tour by art historian Troels Andersen on Saturday, 25 January 25 at 11.00.