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Ole Bjørn
"Skønvirke" - "work of beauty", in Denmark usually refers to the early 1900´s "Art nouveau"-styles, in the field of furniture, for instance. But Ole Bjørn has often used this notion to give an account of his realization of the need for beauty we all got inside.
His imagerie has travelled the wide world.
It has been around Sub-Sahara african and islamic iconography and ornamentation, as well as post-war´s non-figurative "concrete" artists in France. From "red and blue periods" characterized by texture effects, by the expressivity of the strokes of the brush, it has moved towards a deeply personal purity and clarity. A geometry that´s not just a concentrate of sea´s, heaven´s, fields´, light´s planes and lines, but also a sublimation of narrow and tragic
- colourless - everyday society.
We notice, behind this, the moral of high craftsmanship. (It´s no wonder that Ole Bjørn in his youth was a skilled "oil and colour man"... one of Denmark´s last?) But also a philo-sophic basis, a recognition of the fact that "The universe loves itself" (to cite one of his poems).
This life-work, this "beauty-work", seems to have always tended to be an organic part of an architecture, where man can breathe freely. It´s attitude is fundamentally social. At its height –athwart fashion and formal language – it radiates a form of brotherly healing power.
Per Sørensen
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