Jörgen Waring

The most formative episode of his career came through Africa. Trained as a safari leader, Waring spent eleven consecutive summers in Kenya until 1976, guiding expeditions and painting in the field. His contact with Masai and Samburu cultures left a deep imprint: the compositions that emerged from this period are vibrant, layered, and structurally bold, drawing on pattern systems and rhythms that have little to do with European modernism. The 'Africa' works became his first significant breakthrough with collectors and gallerists alike.

By the late 1970s Waring had shifted toward a more purely abstract mode he called 'imaginary philosophy', a term he used to describe a kind of intuitive translation process: observations from the physical world distilled into geometric forms, collaged surfaces, and fields of colour. Works from this period feature triangular motifs, overlapping planes, and dense collage elements - a vocabulary he developed through the 1980s with increasing confidence. The series 'Imaginary Philosophy' extended across multiple works in mixed media, several of which have appeared at Nordic auction houses in recent years.

Exhibitions took him outside Denmark throughout this period. He showed at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen in 1978-1979, at Gallery Rau in Hamburg in 1981, and at the Arras Gallery in New York between 1984 and 1986 - a venue that also showed work connected to Frank Sinatra and Roger Moore, reflecting the gallery's eclectic programme. Works appeared in institutional collections in Denmark, and Danish corporate collections including Codan Insurance and the Danish Industry Council held his paintings.

Waring died in 2022. His auction record was set at Bruun Rasmussen with the work 'Africana' in 2020. In the Swedish market his pieces have circulated primarily through Bukowskis Malmö and regional auction houses in southern Sweden, where the abstract mixed-media compositions and lithographs continue to find buyers.