In 1991, Horsens Art Museum acquired its first works by the Czech/German artist Jiri Georg Dokoupil (b. 1954) – a drawing, a sculpture and the huge work Tire-painting – with a grant from the New Carlsberg Foundation. Later, additional works by Dokoupil have found their way to Horsens. Thus, in 2014, a grant from the foundation enabled the museum to purchase one of his so-called soap bubble paintings.
The painting is created using a special technique where a combination of acrylic paint, soap and pigment is applied to the canvas in the form of soap bubbles.
‘We went to Berlin to visit the artist, and here we saw the latest, striking development of his work. It was on this occasion that we saw the remarkable painting that is now on display at the museum. The quality of this painting makes a significant addition to our Dokoupil collection and to the expression of the museum overall,’ says the museum’s director, Claus Hagedorn-Olsen.
Dokoupil was part of the wild German visual arts movement in the early 1980s and a co-founder of Mühlheimer Freiheit, which inspired many Danish artists at the time, among them Erik A. Frandsen, who is richly represented at Horsens Art Museum’s collection.
‘Apart from their technical skills as painters, both Erik A. Frandsen and Dokoupil often display a highly conceptual approach to painting, which has resulted in major leaps in their artistic expression over the years. This recent painting complements our Dokoupil collection and demonstrates the wide range of his art; at the same time, it also enhances the dialogue among the Danish artists represented in the museum’s collection and the fellow artists from other countries who have influenced them.’
