American Art Collaborative

In Honor Pythagoras, Per 1—Per VI, the thousands of shapes and color strokes symbolize the unity that Jensen saw behind art and science, feeling and thinking. The colored triangles represent prisms that break white light into brilliant hues, suggesting the mystical insight that Jensen felt mathematics offered. Jensen was born to a Danish couple living in Guatemala, and this enormous painting evokes the astronomical calendars found in Mesoamerican temple ruins. He arranged thick strokes of red, yellow, blue, and green in triangles and squares to express the inter-relatedness of all things. Colors affect us by their relation to one another, numbers take their meaning from combinations, and geometry underlies the basic shapes of the universe.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
In Honor Pythagoras, Per 1 — Per VI, the thousands of shapes and color strokes symbolize the unity that Jensen saw behind art and science, feeling and thinking. The colored triangles represent prisms that break white light into brilliant hues, an emblem of the mystical insight that Jensen felt mathematics had to offer.

Jensen was born to a Danish couple living in Guatemala, and this enormous painting evokes the astronomical calendars found in Meso-American temple ruins. He arranged thick strokes of red, yellow, blue and green in triangles and squares as a way to express the inter-relatedness of all things. Colors affect us by their relation to one another, numbers take their meaning from combinations, and geometry underlies the basic shapes of the universe.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006