The early 1970s heralded a renaissance of Jorn's creative power as he embarked on a sequence of paintings that were to consummate many of his most innovative ideas to date. The subjects and pictorial concerns of his earlier phases were now reassessed and reworked with extraordinary clarity of vision.

In Dread and Dream colour finally achieves the automony of expression that Jorn had continually sought, creating a dynamic tension which directs the composition itself. Pure, vibrant colours are applied straight from the tube to bring out the figures with brushstrokes of similar weight, tone and direction.

While the spectator is arrested by the vibrance and strength of the composition, the title of this picture engages the intellect with its deliberate subconsciously suggestive power. The result is a work of both strength and subtlety, which retains the haunting ambiguity of meaning typical of Jorn, but which also shows in its clarity of expression the culmination of the artist's formal ideas.