Arne Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen – Early interest in painting; architecture studies on his father’s wishes

Arne Jacobsen was born Arne Emil Jacobsen on 11 February 1902 in Copenhagen. The son of a Jewish merchant, he had an untroubled childhood, practicing drawing often from the plant and animal world of his Danish home. For his attempts at painting, he painted over the wallpaper at his home, to the delight of his parents, which he described in retrospect as much too turgid. But his wish to become a painter was turned down by his father who saw little prospect in earning a good living, and, urged by his father, even gave up an apprenticeship as stonemason in 1924 to study architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Following two years working for the city building authority, Arne Jacobsen joined forces with his colleague Flemming Lassen to design the so-called House of the Future, a highly modern building of circular layout with a helicopter landing pad on the roof and a jetty in the basement. It was for this house that Jacobsen worked for the first time as a designer and created furniture made of metal. 

Exile in Sweden; work as wallpaper and fabric designer

Following his award-winning future model, Arne Jacobsen also received very real commissions for the present. The young architect grasped the opportunities offered him and took part in various building projects including the Bellavista housing estate in Klampenborg, another in Öresund, the petrol station Skovshoved, and the townhall of Aarhus, for which himself and his colleague Erik Møller were awarded a prize. Jacobsen’s rapid rise suddenly ended, however, when the Jewish architect and his second wife von Jonna had to flee Sweden from the German occupation. In their exile of around two years, Arne Jacobsen returned artistically to his roots, painting the flora and fauna of his new environment and selling the resulting drawings as designs for wallpaper and fabric to department store chains. Whilst his first drawings were still naturalistic, he moved ever more in the direction of abstraction, thus anticipating the lines characteristic of his later designs. 

Modernist architecture and organic design

After the war, Arne Jacobsen was quickly able to resume his former successes and became ironically one of Germany’s most sought-after architects and designers. In doing so, he followed a strict modernist concept which he pursued into the smallest detail, even imposing this on his family in everyday life. As a result, he was often confronted with criticism for not giving enough consideration to the individual ideas of his clients and customers. As a designer, Jacobsen followed another philosophy, focusing on organic forms rather than clear geometric structures, and his pioneering stacking wood chairs for Series 7 became the most sold chair in the world. Jacobsen worked with the Danish furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen for his seating furniture who still offers them in his portfolio today while his ceiling and standard lamps designed for the Danish light manufacturer Louis Poulsen also found widespread distribution. 

Arne Jacobsen died on 24 March 1971 in his birth and hometown of Copenhagen.