Helhesten (Year 1, Booklets 5 & 6)


Helhesten (Year 1, Booklets 5 & 6)
Editor	Robert Dahlmann Olsen
Issue date	November 18, 1941
Cover design	Axel Salto
Followed by	Helhesten (Year 2, Booklet 1)

Helhesten (Year 1, Booklets 5 & 6) is the final double issue of the first year of the Danish art journal Helhesten, edited by Danish architect Robert Dahlmann Olsen. This combined issue completed an extraordinary first year that saw six issues published during the German occupation of Denmark.

This article is part of the Helhesten collection.

Background

The combined fifth and sixth booklets of Helhesten’s first year appeared in November 1941, capping an extraordinarily productive inaugural year that saw six issues published during the German occupation. This double-issue format would become a pattern for later publications as the journal navigated wartime paper shortages and financial constraints.

Cover Design

Axel Salto (1889–1961) designed the cover for this double issue. Salto was one of Denmark’s most celebrated ceramicists and painters, renowned for his organic, nature-inspired stoneware forms that drew on motifs of sprouting, budding, and growing vegetation. His inclusion among the cover artists demonstrated Helhesten’s embrace of the broader Danish modernist community—Salto belonged to an older generation that had established Danish ceramics as an internationally recognized art form, bridging the art nouveau tradition with modern expressionism.

Salto’s work aligned with the Helhesten artists’ interest in organic forms and their belief in the continuity between folk craft traditions and avant-garde experimentation. As Jorn would later note, Danish ceramicists like Thorvald Bindesbøll, the Skovgaard brothers, and Niels Hansen Jacobsen “deserve credit for having revived ceramics as an art form in Denmark”—a tradition that Salto carried forward and that would later influence Jorn’s own ceramic experiments.

End of Year One

The publication of this double issue marked the completion of Helhesten’s first year (1. Aargang), which was subsequently made available as a bound hardcover edition with a cover design by Carl-Henning Pedersen. This collected volume was advertised for sale from the publisher Axelholm for 3 Danish kroner in later issues.

The remarkable productivity of Year One—six issues in eight months—proved financially unsustainable. As Kerry Greaves notes:

Jorn and Olsen were responsible for the practical aspects of production, which rather unusually for a wartime publication, was printed partially in colour. This may have contributed to the journal’s lack of financial solvency after its first year. It was Helhesten’s growing financial debt, in fact, and not censorship by the Germans, that led to its closure in 1944… The financial problems led to uneven publication, so that while six issues came out in 1941, just one issue was produced in 1942, three in 1943, and two in 1944.

- Kerry Greaves, “Hell-Horse: Radical Art and Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Denmark”

Artist-Designed Advertisements

Many of the advertisements included in Helhesten were created by the artists, such as this advertisement for a bar featuring a photo of some of the Helhesten group artists.

Like other issues, this double issue featured artist-designed advertisements that blurred boundaries between fine art and commercial design—a practice central to the Helhesten philosophy of integrating art with everyday life.

The Helhesten Series

Helhesten was published over nine issues from April 1941 to November 1944. The journal was illustrated with over fifty original, mostly colour graphic works, and printed in editions of 800. It was affordable to the general public; a full set of all issues cost twelve kroner, or the equivalent of $2.30 in 1944.

Other issues in the series include:

Helhesten Year 1, Booklet 1 (April 13, 1941) — Cover by Henry Heerup
Helhesten Year 1, Booklet 2 (May 10, 1941) — Cover by Egon Mathiesen
Helhesten Year 1, Booklet 3 (September 17, 1941) — Cover by Jens Søndergaard
Helhesten Year 1, Booklet 4 (October 18, 1941) — Cover by Hans Scherfig
Helhesten Year 2, Booklet 1 (October 30, 1942) — Cover by Niels Lergaard
Helhesten Year 2, Booklets 2 & 3 (March 10, 1943) — Cover by Storm Petersen
Helhesten Year 2, Booklet 4 (December 24, 1943) — Cover by Ejler Bille
Helhesten Year 2, Booklets 5 & 6 (November 11, 1944) — Cover by Carl-Henning Pedersen

Explore the Book

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Creators

Asger Jorn