Niels Borch Jensen
The Archive

The archive of Niels Borch Jensen stands as a testament to a career dedicated to printmaking for over fifty years, collaborating with some of the world’s leading artists. It numbers over 4000 works – which represents one print from of every edition produced in his workshop since the late 1980s.

Niels Borch Jensen founded his Copenhagen print studio in 1979 and since that time he has established a reputation as one of the world’s leading producers and publishers of prints.
Over some 46 years Niels Borch Jensen has collaborated with more than 162 leading international artists, creating prints with luminaries such as William Anastasi, Georg Baselitz, Huma Bhabha, Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Olafur Eliasson, Gunter Förg, Carsten Höller, Ragnar Kjartansson, Per Kirkeby, Julie Mehretu, Tal R, Al Taylor and Danh Vo, amongst many others. Through this process he has amassed a comprehensive archive of a diverse array of prints. While a collection of prints editioned between 1979 and 1987 are held in the Vejle Art Museum in Denmark, the remaining collection of over 4000 works form his ongoing archive. They represent a print from every edition he has produced since that time, and it is currently valued at over 4,5 million euros.
There is a strong contingent of European artists represented in the archive, including a large proportion of works by Scandinavian artists, as well as artists from North and South America. This is due in part to Jensen’s extensive artistic network that extends from Copenhagen to Berlin, London, New York and Mexico City.
Examples from the archive
The largest holdings in the archive are works by artists with whom Borch Jensen established a long-standing collaboration over many years to create many series of prints. Danish artist Per Kirkeby (1938 – 2018) was the first artist to collaborate with Niels Borch Jensen in his newly founded workshop 1979. It was here that he first experimented with colour printing, different compositional formats and diverse techniques, including the production of monotypes and monoprints. The collaboration continued for almost four decades until 2017, during which time he created the vast majority of Kirkeby’s print oeuvre – over 400 prints, making the artist one of Denmark’s most prolific printmakers.
Georg Baselitz (b.1938, Germany) has an ongoing collaboration with Borch Editions since 1990, working closely with master printer Mette Ulstrup as well as Niels Borch Jensen. The collaborative process is facilitated by regular visits to Baselitz’s studio near Munich to develop each new series. There are 452 Baselitz prints in the archive to date, with more series currently in development during 2025.

New York based artist Julie Mehretu (b. 1970) has been working with Niels Borch Jensen since 2015, completing the two significant series of prints Epigraph, Damacus 2016 and Slouching Towards Bethlehem 2020. They each combine complex layers of etching techniques with photogravure to create nuanced prints with an extraordinary sense of depth and tactility. Her next project with Borch Editions is scheduled for 2025.
Danish artist, Tal R (b.1967) was still an art student when he started working with Niels Borch Jensen in 1995, and their collaboration continues today. Their approach to making prints based on free-ranging experimentation has resulted in some 340 editions in a large variety of techniques. In 2023 he explored the painterly technique of monotype for the first time and produced a new series of colourful monotypes. Most recently he has produced a series of prints which combine etching and woodcut techniques to create evocative images of the artist’s domestic sphere.

Berlin-based artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) has worked exclusively with BORCH Editions to make his prints, completing ten significant series of works with Niels Borch Jensen. This includes the four-part Cartographic Series developed over a period of six years between 2001 and 2007. There are 156 prints by Eliasson in the archive that date from 1996 to 2009.
Printmaking has become an essential part of renowned English artist Tacita Dean’s (b. 1965) practice since she first collaborated with Niels Borch Jensen in 2001. Analogue technologies play a central role in her oeuvre, which incorporates film, drawing and printmaking. She employs the technique of photogravure in combination with other techniques to transfer her poetic visual narratives into the realm of prints. To date she has made the vast majority of her print oeuvre with Niels Borch Jensen, including 16 significant series of works, numbering some 143 prints in all.

Niels Borch Jensen continues to establish new collaborations with artists from around the world, whilst further experimenting with techniques and seeking new methods to achieve their visions. Ragnar Kjartansson, an Icelandic artist whose practice encompasses performance, painting, video installations and drawing, has collaborated with Niels Borch Jensen since 2020 to create three significant series of prints in the techniques of woodcut and etching.
A recent collaboration with Norwegian artist Frida Orupabo (b. 1986) transformed her digital assemblages of found imagery into a series of large-scale photogravures that feature figures emerging in vivid, glowing greens from the velvety black backgrounds. In a subsequent series she has experimented with the use of embossing in combination with photogravure, to give her uncanny and disquieting images a depth and presence, which echoes her paper collages.

THE LEGACY
Niels Borch Jensen’s extensive archive of prints encapsulates a unique perspective of contemporary printmaking by leading artists from America, Scandinavia, as well as Europe more broadly. Ultimately, he would like to find a home for the archive in a public collection so that it can be accessible to future generations.
A full list of artists can be seen below, and a list of all works in the archive with accompanying images can be downloaded here.
Lene Adler Petersen
William Anastasi
Mogens Andersen
Per Bak Jensen
Mario Benedetti
Ejler Bille
Ola Billgren
Julius von Bismarck
Jens Birkemose
Peter Bonde
Dove Bradshaw
Marc Brandenburg
André Butzer
Ernesto Caivano
Pierpaolo Campanini
Merlin Carpenter
Claus Carstensen
Eric Christian Isaksen
Rikke Diemer & Jessie Kleemann
Peter Doig
Markus Draper
Jimmie Durham
Inge Ellegaard
Stephen Ellis
Jeffrey Eugenides
Günther Förg
Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson
Gregor Fuchs
Max Gimblett
Nils Erik Gjerdevik
Aharon Gluska
Russell T Gordon
Rodney Graham
Joachim Grommek
Erik Hagens
Mathew Hale
Kirrily Hammond
Anton Henning
John Henry
Stefan Hirsig
Damien Hirst
Adi Holzer
Jörg Immendorff
Frans Jacobi
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
Olav Christopher Jenssen
Kirsten Justesen
Eske Kath
Hubert Kiecol
Walter Kranz
Michael Krebber
Elke Krystufek
Sean Landers
Toni Larsen
Markus Lüpertz
Max M Book
Peter Mandrup
H.M. Dronning Margrethe 2
Albert Mertz
Wardell Milan
John Miller
Florian Neusüss
Chris Ofili
Joao Penalva
A.R Penck
Paul Preben Gadegaard
Lars Ravn
Niels Reumert
Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd
Daniel Richter
Jørgen Rømer
Tom Sandberg
Henrik Saxgren
David Shrigley
Trine Søndergaard
Trine Søndergaard & Nicolai Howalt
Simon Starling
Jana Sterbak
Thaddeus Strode
Elaine Sturtevant
Nicholas Taylor
Rachel Whiteread
Christopher Wool
Michel Würthle
Karen Yama