Prints + Multiples 
26 February 2020
Prints + Multiples 
127

Alfred Jensen 1903–1981

Portfolio #2

1973
screenprint in colors 35 h × 35 w in (89 × 89 cm)
estimate: $700–900
result: $2,500
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Signed, dated and numbered to lower edge ‘34/150 Alfred Jensen 1973’. This work is number 34 from the edition of 150 published by Pace Editions, New York.
provenance: James W. Hyams Collection
exhibited: Collecting Prints: Selections from the Collection of James W. Hyams, 2016, Piedmont Arts, Martinsville, Virginia

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The James W. Hyams Collection

James W. Hyams started collecting art in 1967 when he was a student in college. The first work Hyams purchased—Vegetable Soup Can from Campbell’s Soup I by Andy Warhol—was paid for in installments and hung in his dorm room. A few years later, he purchased his second work by Warhol and from there collecting became a way of life. 

Over the years, Hyams has amassed a stunning collection of prints from 1960s to the present day. From Warhol to Hirst, or Lichtenstein to Doig, his collection is about as contemporary as it gets. Focusing on works that he likes by influential artists, his collection of more than 400 prints is an exceptional survey of the most important art movements of the second half of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century.  

Generous with his collection, Hyams has loaned many works to galleries and universities, sharing his collection with a public audience. Further, his pieces are proudly on display in his home, his acclaimed interior widely published. 

I don't buy pieces that I don't like. But I do have a purpose in my collection. I am interested in buying key artists from the period.

James W. Hyams

Alfred Jensen 1903–1981

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Alfred Jensen was called “one of the best painters in the United States” by Donald Judd and his style, both intellectual and intuitive, belies simple categorization. Inspired by his endless and far-ranging travels, as well as his interest in ancient civilizations, arcane texts, numerical systems, religion and ritual, architecture and color theory (to name just a few), Jensen’s paintings are “color-drenched puzzles,” that explore how we see and, throughout history, collectively organize what we observe into systems and beliefs.

Jensen was born in 1903 to a Danish father and a German-Polish mother in Guatemala City. He traveled extensively in his youth as an intermittent seaman, from 1917 to 1926. In 1924, after a short time owning a farm in Mexico, he moved to California and began his art training at the San Diego Fine Arts School and would later study under Hans Hofmann in Munich from 1926 to 1927. Mostly studying old masters drawings, Jensen felt stifled by the training and left school to travel with and advise the collecting habits of Saidie Adler May, a wealthy student he had met while studying with Hofmann who would serve as his patron for the next several decades. During these travels, he visited the studios of many of the greatest 20th century artists, including Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Alberto Giacometti. Jensen became a resident of the United States in 1934 but spent most of the next two decades working while traveling throughout Europe, North Africa and the US with May.

In 1951, upon May’s death, he established a studio in New York City, aligning himself with contemporary painters such as Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning and developing a close friendship with Mark Rothko. The late 1950s brought about Jensen’s mature work he is most celebrated for—large paintings of diagrams and grids of unmixed paint, featuring theories and text pulled from and inspired by disparate sources such as the I-Ching, Mayan calendars, ancient textiles and Goethe’s color theories. More than art, Jensen considered his paintings to be serious studies in color, light and logic.

The 1960s and 1970s brought about heightened interest in his work, as he further developed his style and his endless exploration into history’s wide-ranging philosophies. He showed extensively throughout Europe and New York and had solo exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1961 and 1985. Jensen died in 1981 near his home in New Jersey, leaving behind a complex and singular body of work. Dia Center for the Arts, New York held a retrospective of Jensen’s work in 2001.

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