Friedlaender, Johnny

The painter Johnny Friedlaender was a passionate graphic artist and a pioneer of modern color etching. He broke the traditional technique of etching and supplemented it with his own style, refined by constant experimentation. Many important artists learned to use his technique in his workshop in Paris.
 

After Friedlaender fled his native Pless to Wroclaw in 1921, he began studying there at the Academy of Fine Arts. He graduated with a master's degree from Otto Mueller, who belonged to the renowned artists' association "Die Brücke". Already in this early creative phase Friedlaender worked mostly with etching in all its variants. Thus, only a few lithographs or silkscreens exist.
  

Due to his flight from the war, a period followed with many changes of location, before he finally emigrated to Paris with his wife in 1937. There he worked by means of etchings and watercolors for a literary weekly newspaper and successfully participated in group exhibitions curated by Gaston Diehl. In 1948, another exhibition followed in Copenhagen. In the years that followed, Friedlaender gained international attention through numerous exhibitions in metropolises such as Tokyo, the Triennale in Milan, the Biennale in Sao Paolo, San Fransisco, New York, and ultimately at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and in Paris. His early works, which still had an expressionist feel, became more graphic and abstract over time. In 1956 he finally received a professorship at the Salzburg Academy of Art. A few years before his death, the Kunsthalle Bremen dedicated a major retrospective to Johnny Friedlaender in 1987. To this day, his unique color etchings are gaining worldwide recognition.