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Photo: Hardy Döhrn

Photo: Mario Gutkowski

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Jørgen Dobloug's work from the 1960s

No form of art allows such intimate access to the artist than the sketch. It is as though the sketch reveals the inner workings of the artist's mind and provides us with a piece of the artist himself. Jørgen Dobloug's sketchbooks open up a unique perspective on his entire body of work. The drawings in these books were created for private use rather than for public display. Dated from 1963 to 1969, they bear witness to Dobloug's formative years; from the time he gave his first painting a title to when he began his art studies in Switzerland. Sketch by sketch, page after page, book by book, the artist's ideas, drafts, experiments, plans, discoveries and reflections are laid bare. The books provide insight into art's creation by trial and investigation, into a mindset and a life. What is striking about this material is how systematically Dobloug works with sketches as a starting point for the forms, colours, scale and types of paint used in his finished works. The seed is laid, ready to germinate in these modest office supply sketchpads of the Norwegian Emo brand.

Along with working drawings, the sketchbooks contain more abrupt and seemingly absurd entries: drafts for poems such as "Dikkedukk" and "Hikk-klikk" (phrases which turn up later as titles for paintings) and statements like "A good singer sings well" or "The logic is sound but not for cannibals." There are references to literature, such as A Dictionary of Modern Painting and Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto, drafts for letters and applications, Dobloug's CV, grades from Berg Secondary School in Oslo and a presentation of his father, a civil engineer at the Norwegian Directorate for Water Resources and Energy.

Also noteworthy is Dobloug's experimentation with his signature. An artist's signature ties into a complex, mythical universe, which involves the construction of an artistic identity as well as issues of authorship, authenticity and the art market. Dobloug tests out a range of signatures by way of alphabetic exercises and writing styles. This experimentation with letters finds its way into his paintings, first with the letter A and subsequently with various alphabetic elements. The sketches and signatures, together with photographs of Doubloug, one of which captures him gazing at himself in a mirror, circle in on a young man's self-image and search to inhabit the role of an artist.

At the age of 17, Dobloug paints his first painting, signs it, and entitles it "Mitt første bilde" (My First Painting, 1962) – a title and act marked by self-awareness. In an otherwise abstract painting in which the surface is accentuated, we see the simplified form of a house and what appears to be the house's infrastructure or technical apparatus. There is a certain fascination about studying an artist's first work – the very dawn of a life's oeuvre, a first step towards one's own artistic expression. Dobloug's first painting already announces his venture into abstraction and simple motifs that tend towards the schematic, the banal and strikingly colourful – all of which will later become his trademark.

This is the first public presentation of Dobloug's earliest work from the 1960s. Initially, the idea was to show his production up to and including his studies in Düsseldorf with Joseph Beuys (1921–86). However, Dobloug's work immediately preceding his stay in Düsseldorf is so rich and interesting that it calls for an exhibition of its own. As a first step in shedding light on his overall oeuvre, this presentation reflects a pronounced contemporary interest in exploring the more or less unknown, forgotten or underexposed sides of artists' work. Such focus has been especially directed towards female artists, such as Siri Aurdal (b. 1937, Oslo) and in an international context Carmen Herrera (b. 1915) – both of whom, like Dobloug, explore abstract, geometrical forms of expression. Dobloug is by no means an unknown figure in Norwegian art history: His work is deeply admired by artists and represented in important art collections. He is, however, a lesser-known figure among the general art public, and his work and biography have not received the attention they merit.

This lack of broader recognition is perhaps explained by Dobloug's prolonged stay in Düsseldorf – a city closely tied to Norwegian art history since the 1800s starting with the renowned national romanticists Adolph Tidemand and Hans Gude. Doubloug's time in the city coincided with pivotal events and figures in the history of modern art, including the struggle for artistic freedom of expression and Beuys' art and professorship at the Kunstakademie. He found himself in the thick of the action both as a student of Beuys and as a participant in the protests supporting Beuys' artistic and educational practices. The young artist's central position and network in Düsseldorf tie into a ground-breaking chapter in the history of the international avant-garde, with Beuys as the main protagonist. Doubloug belongs to the list of Beuys' many notable students.

Dobloug is perhaps best known for his expressive and roughly painted human heads – images in which precise, stencil-like forms are combined with robust brushwork. In a series of works from the 1980s, he took a number of earlier paintings from the 1960s and applied bold, expressive brushstrokes, thereby building a bridge on canvas across the pictures' temporal and stylistic divides.

A comprehensive overview of Dobloug's production will deepen, revise and add a new chapter to both Norwegian and international art history. Not only is his work in close dialogue with the contemporary, international avant-garde: By uniting formal and reductive approaches with spontaneous brushwork, Dobloug creates a bond between two distinct artistic traditions. His sketches and paintings from the 1960s embrace a legacy spanning from Russian Constructivism and American Minimalism to Edvard Munch, Asger Jorn and Abstract Expressionism.

Starting at the time of "Mitt første bilde" in 1962, Dobloug's sketchbooks reveal his systematic experimentation with abstraction and serial development of ideas. We see the consistent testing out of colour, form and geometry. How did Dobloug arrive at this? What were his references? His work indicates various influences as he paints his way through abstract modernists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Kurt Schwitters. Art books are an important source for those who study art and – as in the case of Dobloug's sketchbooks – offer a particular way of experiencing it. Books allow one to encounter art without distraction; they create a context of their own, a space for one's own ideas about what art might look like. Step by step, Dobloug explores the possibilities of art and tests out his own abstract versions. He investigates the expressive potential of colour, form, geometry and gesture in sketches, paintings and sculptures. There is a captivating photo of Dobloug outdoors with his parents in 1969, surrounded by paintings and sculptures from his serial exploration of the circle entitled Til alle som arbeider på sykehus (To all who work in hospitals).

Dobloug was rejected by the art academy in Oslo and decided to venture abroad, initially to Basel, where his decisive encounter with Beuys' work took place and prompted him to write to the artist in 1970: "I felt a tremendous connection to your work" and "...I have one burning desire: to attend your classes." Thus began his studies with Beuys in Düsseldorf from 1971 to 1978. Just as "Mitt første bilde" heralds the start of Dobloug's artistic career, his letter to Beuys marks both a major turn and a revitalisation of the path he staked out in the 1960s in his exploration of abstract art, the role of the artist and the concept of art. We can accompany him along the way through his sketches – like self-portraits of the artist Jørgen Dobloug on his journey. Like pieces of the artist himself.

Wenche Volle

"And there he sat, reading his passport" (note from sketch book 1968–69)

Imagining Jørgen Dobloug's youth in Norway, I find myself picturing a time dictated by the desire to create art and participate in processes of international exchange and the communication of aesthetic production. I first met him in Düsseldorf in the early 1980s, at a time when he was one of the serious and committed students of the Beuys class. His unhurried, prudent way of speaking, his quiet insistence and his commitment to art within a societal context made for quite a singular stance in the hustle and bustle of those years. Both his dedication to uphold and perpetuate his former teacher's ideas even after Beuys was dismissed from his position at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the subsequent steps in his artistic work are deeply engraved in my memory: Jørgen Dobloug always remained on my creative horizon, and even at times when I would see less of his art, I would meet with him regularly on my trips to Oslo.

And yet, it is only today that we get to know his earliest works – dating back to when, as a student in Oslo, he would fill entire sketch books with drawings of planes, sequences of constructed circles and segments of spheres, or devise gestural and Tachist arrangements, self portraits, texts, paintings and sculptures. In his 1968 application to study at Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel, he laconically described his self-taught career in art with the words "my first paintings are from around 1962 and originated mainly from mathematical-geometrical form language. Because I was unfortunately never taught the basics of drawing and painting, I was forced to struggle towards my goal by teaching myself, which helped me achieve a few smaller results" (p. X).

In 1963 he wrote "VIVE MOI" into one of his sketch books: the encouraging words of a fledgling artist who has barely set out on his career – or perhaps the very epitome of what he expected of himself. "Mitt første bilde", Norwegian for "my first painting", is a multi-coloured composition with large planes and traces of how a painter who hasn't quite found his dexterity yet would go to work. But it was not long before Dobloug began to re-define his art by working with the image format, splitting the planes and developing clear structures. Planar works in bright colours with sharp edges ensued, a perfect example being "Hommage à 'The Beatles'" (1965) whose final version sees the image field develop flush with the upper edge of the painting, with a white cloud playfully emerging from behind triangular shapes. These first works reveal a great variety of stimuli; for instance, the cheerfulness of pop culture reflected in the illustrations and films of Heinz Edelmann. But Dobloug soon began to concentrate on geometrical shapes – strictly constructed, as the drawings exemplify, from geometrical elements left open to be continued or assembled with the help of individual objects: circles, semi-circles and rectangles. The mathematically recordable construction of such sequences becomes all the more evident on another sketch book page which depicts alternating shapes accompanied by a succinct series of letters: a b c b a b c b. Dobloug constructs and calculates, he parades his geometrically-constructivist approach of thinking in images and takes an abstractive distance all the way to producing conceptual formulae.

Over and over again he jots down references and the names of artists, writers and philosophers whose oeuvre he touches upon – among them Frank Stella and Richard Motherwell, Kazimir Malevich, Neil Jenney, Mario Merz, Bruce Naumann, Sarkis, Richard Serra and Keith Sonnier, and with them the entire horizon of a rather minimalist approach to art between painting and sculpture. In his notes, Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson represent the great figures of Norwegian literature side by side with the existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers. Countless keywords disclose Dobloug's research and studies at university, in reading and in the media: A quest which, while still in Norway, allowed the young intellectual and artist to discover his place and context at international level.

In the second half of the 1960s, his compositions became more rigid and minimalist. By 1967/68, he produced square image fields with diagonal stripes running across, changing diagonals and symmetrically divided motifs, the proximity to Op Art being more than evident. Towards 1968, he had moved on to tondo creations with variations of national flags or circle segments in vivid primary and secondary colours. In "Til alle som arbeider på sykehus" (to all who work in hospitals), serial circular elements line up to form strict, well-organised rows or variable, playful reliefs in yellow and red.

One sketch reads "LIVE IN YOUR HEAD" – the concepts urge on, in an attempt to link art and thought. Soon Dobloug's home town Oslo appears to be no longer expedient, and in 1968 Basel becomes his first venture abroad. The opportunities and limitations of studying arts and crafts presumably became increasingly clear to him when all of a sudden he was faced with new, unfamiliar and radical positions at a number of exhibitions. Joseph Beuys with his open, philosophically lined artistic concept, which in 1969 Dobloug encountered at two exhibitions in Basel, fascinated him and ultimately drew him to Düsseldorf with the aim of studying with Beuys. The radicalness and readiness to assume risks in practising art which the young artist developed in the years to follow have made him one of the most significant figures of the Düsseldorf art scene of the 1980s and 1990s – key years during which art and socio-political contention was often characterised by great passion and personal involvement. That is where his work had led him: the point to which his "VIVE MOI" had taken him against all difficulties and setbacks. And now he was at long last part of the community which he had dreamt of for so long.

Ulrich Krempel

Bibliography