Alfred Jensen  (American, 1903-1981) 

Alfred Jensen (American, 1903–1981) was an Abstract painter best known for grids composed of colored geometric shapes, painted in impasto. Born in Guatemala, he grew up in Denmark and studied in Paris and at Hans Hoffman’s art school in Munich. He traveled widely before settling in New York City in 1951. His early work is similar to that of Abstract Expressionists, but in the early 1960s Jensen began to paint according to symbolic geometric patterns. His work has a broad range of influences, including cosmology, Mayan and ancient Chinese calendars, the color theories of Goethe, and the writings of Leonardo da Vinci. One of his early works, Beginning Cycle – Ending (1960), is composed of five panels divided into grids, and is inscribed with a number from the Shang oracle bone inscriptions, from the 14th to 11th centuries B.C. His work is related to his contemporaries who were interested in systems of time, such as Alighiero Boetti and On Kawara. Jensen’s work has been exhibited at the Dia Art Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His work is currently held in several public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.