KunstenaarNorwegian
Erik Harry Johannessen
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Erik Harry Johannessen was born on 6 January 1902, not in Norway but in Sweden, as the illegitimate child of a Norwegian mother. He came to Kristiania (later Oslo) in 1904 and grew up in the Norwegian capital, which would remain the centre of his artistic life. He studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1924 to 1925, a relatively brief formal education that he supplemented through direct contact with more experienced painters.
The decisive turn in his development came between 1933 and 1935, when he had a studio adjacent to Kai Fjell in Oslo. Fjell, one of the leading figures in Norwegian modern painting, encouraged Johannessen to experiment with woodcuts. The results were rapid and intense: from February to October 1934 he produced approximately twenty-six prints, nearly all of them concerned with themes of life, death, anxiety, sexuality, and the drives and inhibitions that structure human experience. He exhibited the woodcuts at Kunstnerforbundet (the Artists' Association) in October 1934.
The following spring, 1935, Johannessen produced twenty to twenty-five large-format paintings in a surge of concentrated work. These paintings, together with the woodcuts, form the core of his contribution to Norwegian art. The collector Rolf Stenersen, who had also championed Edvard Munch, acquired many of them, and they are now accessible at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo. His visual language in this period is distinctive: figures with double profiles or black-and-white bodies overlaid on each other, setting up oppositions between good and evil, drive and inhibition. The palette is deliberately muted - black, grey, ochre, beige, and brown applied in broad, thick areas - and the compositions build on ellipses, diamonds, and triangles used as structural and decorative elements simultaneously.
The influence of Edvard Munch on Johannessen's psychological intensity is frequently noted, though his imagery is more schematic and less expressionistically raw than Munch's. His religious preoccupations surfaced in a striking 1935 painting depicting Jesus as a female figure - naked, on the cross, wearing a bridal veil - a work that reflected the surrealist milieu he moved in during those years.
In his later career Johannessen broadened his subject matter to landscapes, crowd pictures, and altarpieces for Norwegian churches. He worked in both oil and graphic media throughout his life. In 1962 he was awarded the King's Medal of Merit in Gold (Kongens fortjenstmedalje i gull), Norway's royal honour for distinguished service. He is represented in the collections of the National Museum in Oslo, which holds several works including Høytid, Daggry, and Speilbilde.
He died on 25 December 1980.
On the auction market, Johannessen's works circulate almost exclusively within Norway. Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner (GWPA), the Oslo house specialising in Norwegian nineteenth and twentieth century art, accounts for 44 of the 46 items indexed on Auctionist. The vast majority are categorised as art or paintings. Top results include Studie at NOK 80,000, Artister at NOK 60,000, Badende kvinner at NOK 59,000, and Bruden at NOK 50,000. Works from the 1930s - particularly those connected to the Stenersen collection or to his surrealist period - attract the strongest interest from Norwegian collectors.