Painter. He is considered one of the most important Danish artists of the post-World War II period. From 1936 to 1937 he stayed in Paris as a pupil of Fernand Léger. In 1948 he founded the Cobra Group together with Belgian and Dutch artists, and from 1956 he lived abroad, mainly in Paris. His first naturalistic paintings from the early 1930s were followed by a cubist period and later by a surrealistic-abstract period until he found his own personal style in the 1940s. In 1953 he gave his collection of his own and others’ works to Silkeborg Art Museum, and other works can be seen in a large number of museums in Europe and the United States. Besides painting he worked with ceramics, litography and sculpture and wrote many books on art. (bio by: Erik Skytte)