Egill Jacobsen, Maskedans i Brunt, 1943

A member of the Danish branch of CoBrA, the international group of artists and writers, Jacobsen produced his masks after a decisive encounter with Picasso's work in Paris in 1914. They have elements of children's drawings, Oceanic idols and the Scandinavian bestiary, but also explore the abstract. The mask became the structural motif in his work: a transcendental form of universal expression.
By Mica Gherghescu, art historian and conservation attaché at the Musée National d'Art Moderne