Le voyageur de Munich

In 1958 Asger Jorn was incorporating various substances into his paintings. In Le Voyageur de Munich he mixed sand with his paint in sections of the artwork. The image is built up from layers of splattered paint. This painting can be described as ‘art informel,’ a term coined by the critic Michel Tapié in 1952. Art informel typically refers to the art made in Western Europe that parallels Abstract Expressionism in the United States. Such art is characterized by expressive gesture, spontaneous, intuitive movement, and forms that occupy a space between legible imagery and illegible abstraction. In Le Voyageur a face slowly emerges from the splatters and drips, which are also characteristic of art informel. The painting formally resembles Jorn’s earlier work related to the Cobra group. This is clear in his use of rich colour and a primitivist childlike imagery.