The Brotherhood

The Experimenting Art School (Den Eksperimenterende Kunstskole) was founded in Copenhagen in 1961 by the painter Poul Gernes. Giving little thought to international trends and practices, Gernes had sketched out a program for a school where teachers and students would be peers, where work would be done collectively, and where experimentation was the overarching goal. The school can be compared to Bauhaus and Black Mountain College. The Eks School was in contact with figures such as Joseph Beuys, Öyvind Fahlström, Henry Flynt, Takehisa Kosugi, George Maciunas, and Nam June Paik. After its early years the school evolved into an art grouping that included painters, composers, sculptors, writers, and filmmakers – with names like Henning Christiansen, Per Kirkeby, and Bjørn Nørgaard. The school itself came to an end in 1969, but its legacy lived on throughout the 1970s.