ArtistGerman-French
Johnny Friedlaender
1 active items
Johnny Gotthard Friedlaender was born on 21 December 1912 in Pless, Prussian Silesia - a town now known as Pszczyna in southern Poland. His father worked as a pharmacist, and Friedlaender received a rigorous formal art education, enrolling at the Staatliche Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe in Breslau, where he studied under the Expressionist painter Otto Mueller. He graduated as a master student in 1928, and by 1930 had moved to Dresden, where he showed at the J. Sandel Gallery and the Dresden Art Museum.
The political situation in Germany ended this early career abruptly. In 1933, following the Nazi rise to power, Friedlaender was imprisoned in a concentration camp. After release, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia, and then traveled through Switzerland, Austria, France, and Belgium. A solo exhibition of etchings and watercolors at The Hague brought him some recognition across Europe. In 1937, he and his wife - an actress - fled to Paris as political refugees. World War II interrupted again: between 1939 and 1943, Friedlaender was interned in a series of camps in France, surviving under deeply difficult conditions before regaining his freedom and resuming work in Paris.
Settled permanently in France, Friedlaender became a French citizen - sources vary between 1950 and 1952 - and found his artistic footing within the postwar Parisian milieu. Though he continued to paint in oil and watercolor throughout his life, describing himself at times as "a painter who engraves," it was his work in color aquatint etching that drew the widest attention. Aquatint is a technically demanding intaglio process that allows for tonal gradation and layered color; Friedlaender pushed its expressive range further than most of his contemporaries, developing complex, luminous compositions that moved away from his earlier Expressionist influences toward a precise, lyrical abstraction. His printed works became known for their harmonic palettes and delicate interplay of form and symbol, qualities that placed him at the edge of the Ecole de Paris in its postwar phase.
From his Paris atelier, Friedlaender taught a number of artists who went on to significant careers of their own, including Arthur Luiz Piza, Brigitte Coudrain, Rene Carcan, Andreas Nottebohm, and Graciela Rodo Boulanger. In 1959, UNESCO invited him to take a teaching post at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, extending his pedagogical influence into South America. A retrospective of his work was held at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1978, and he received the Lovis Corinth Prize in Regensburg around 1981. Further retrospectives were mounted at the Bremen Art Museum for his seventy-fifth birthday and in Bonn for his eightieth, the latter shortly before his death in Paris on 18 June 1992.
On the Nordic auction market, Friedlaender's prints appear consistently, with works turning up at houses including Gomér and Andersson Nyköping, Metropol, and Crafoord Auktioner Lund, as well as the French house Aguttes. On Auctionist, 16 items attributed to Friedlaender have come to market, primarily color etchings and aquatints. The top result was 1,070 SEK for a signed color aquatint titled "Mai (Pour le printemps)". Most lots settle in the 300-600 SEK range, consistent with the broader market for his printed work at regional auctions, where signed and numbered impressions attract steady interest from collectors familiar with the postwar School of Paris.