Jacobsen studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen from 1932 to 1933. Early influences upon him included the Danish painters Harald Giersing, Jens Sondergaard and Edvard Weie. However, he quickly discovered an individual, highly painterly form of expression using intense colors. After his debut at the Kunstnernes Efterarsudstilling (Artists' autumn exhibition) in Copenhagen in 1932, he went to Paris, where the work of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse had a great impact on him. At the same time he sought inspiration in the folk art of Africa and in this he found a subject that ran through all his work: the mask. He was enchanted by its simple, archetypal form and in 1936 he exhibited mask pictures for the first time. The figurative and the colouristic aspects of his work culminated in Orange Object (1940; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst), which revealed the mask picture as simultaneously grotesque and Constructivist in character.
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