ArtistSwedish
Johannes Olsson
5 active items
Johannes Olsson was born on 18 February 1945 in Härnösand, a town on the High Coast of northern Sweden. His path into art was not immediate: he came to formal training in the mid-1970s, studying printmaking at KV Art School in Kristianstad. At that point his work was shaped partly by the example of the German artist Käthe Kollwitz, whose engagement with social suffering and printmaking as a medium for political expression left a visible mark on his early output. In 1977 he began studies at Brighton University, Faculty of Art, in England, an experience that brought him into contact with British and broader European contemporary practice.
The work that has come to define Olsson's place in the Swedish auction market belongs to a different register than Kollwitz-influenced social figuration. His colour lithographs present ordinary objects - eggs, erasers, safety pins, pens, leaves, water droplets - isolated against neutral grounds or suspended in apparently weightless space. Titles such as "Ägget" (The Egg), "Suddgummi" (Eraser), "Hängande penna" (Hanging pen), and "Vattendroppar" (Water droplets) signal a sustained fascination with the object as a vehicle for contemplation. The compositions are spare and precise, their clarity a counterpoint to the more gestural tendencies in Swedish painting of the same decades.
Olsson worked in both oil and print, and the two sides of his practice inform each other. His oils on canvas from the 1970s - including a work with a mounted safety pin signed and dated 1975, and a composition with leaves on rope from the same year - share the same interest in the isolated, closely observed object that characterises the lithograph series. A 1972 oil on wood titled "Katastrof" suggests a more overtly expressive vein, though the dominant tendency across his output is analytical and restrained.
His prints were produced in numbered editions typically running to 170 or 250 copies, and Épreuve d'Artiste (artist's proof) versions of certain compositions have also appeared at auction. Editions such as "Ägget" (165/250) and "Suddgummi" (75/170) circulate across a broad range of Swedish auction houses, from Stockholm to smaller regional houses.
On the auction market, Olsson's 19 works tracked on Auctionist span venues including Växjö Auktionskammare, Auktionshuset Kolonn, Örebro Stadsauktioner, and Limhamns Auktionsbyrå, indicating a distribution across Sweden's auction geography. Prices range from under 500 SEK for simpler print lots to 2,400 SEK for an oil on canvas with a mounted safety pin, and a notable 2,206 EUR for an Épreuve d'Artiste composition with a bent pen. The eggs and eraser prints attract the most consistent repeat attention from buyers.