ArtistSwedish
Janeric Johansson
2 active items
Janeric Johansson was born in 1950 in Vetlanda, a small town in Smaland, southern Sweden. Before reaching his twenties he held his debut exhibition in his hometown, then chose Malmo as his permanent base - a decision that would place him at the crossroads of Scandinavian and continental European art circuits for the next five decades. Entirely self-taught, he has built one of the most internationally active careers of any Swedish artist of his generation.
His practice spans drawing, lithography, painting, and large-scale three-dimensional works. The realism of his horse imagery - rendered with precision in pencil and crayon - functions as a symbolic stand-in for the human figure, placed against abstract, sculptural, and painted passages that create tension within the composition. Johansson has described his art as an open meeting place, a space where multiple ways of seeing the same truth can coexist.
In 1993 he began working on galvanised sheet metal, developing a technique that produces paintings which shift in appearance as the viewer moves through the room. These large-format mixed-media works pushed his practice toward something between painting and sculpture, and they remain among his most technically distinctive output. The same investigative spirit informed a major multi-panel work, "The Seven Elements" (2008), an eleven-part acrylic and sand painting on canvas and metal that expanded on classical ideas about the four elements.
His international reach is documented through a series of institutional acknowledgements. He received Second Prize at the International Graphic Biennial in Cabo Frio, Brazil (1983), and was awarded the Hanga Annual Award from the Japan Print Association, whose collection is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Tokyo. He was appointed honorary professor at the Russian Museum School in St. Petersburg in 1986, and at Yunnan Art University in Kunming, China in 1992. Group exhibition credits include the Drawing Triennial in England, Nordic Graphics in Dalarna, and a Graphic Biennial in Brazil. His work is held in 35 art museums across 17 countries, among them the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, institutions in Jerusalem, Belfast, Nuremberg, and Tokyo.
His Christian faith has shaped the thematic dimensions of later work, explored in interviews with Swedish publications including Dagen and Tidskriften NOD. This dimension is perhaps most transparent in "The Seven Elements," where the compositional centre - a void between the other six - is framed as the space that Johansson believes the human search for meaning leaves open.
In the Nordic auction market, Johansson's prints and drawings appear regularly at houses including Garpenhus Auktioner, Crafoord Auktioner Lund, and Limhamns Auktionsbyrå. The Auctionist database holds 14 items, a mix of signed and numbered lithographs, colour prints, pencil drawings on paper, and mixed-media works. Recorded titles include "Karusell" (a signed colour lithograph that sold for 400 EUR at Helsingborgs Auktionskammare), still lifes, horse compositions, and an early graphite self-portrait dated 1969. Prices at Swedish auction are modest relative to his international profile, with lots typically settling in the 300-700 SEK range for smaller prints.