PRINTMAKING – JOHNNY FRIEDLAENDER

PRESS RELEASE

Johnny Friedlaender was born on 21 June 1912 in Pless (now Pszczyna), as the son of a pharmacist. After school he studied at the Preslau Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1920s under Professor Otto Müller, later Carlo Mense. His first etchings and lithographs date from this period. At the age of 18, he moved to Dresden, where he participated in his first exhibition. After Hitler came to power, Friedlaender, after his release from a concentration camp, emigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1935. Friedlaender held his first major exhibition of watercolours and prints in The Hague in 1937, after moving from Czechoslovakia through Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium to the Netherlands. In December 1937 Friedlaender moved to Paris, where, as a refugee, he had to renew his study permit every week. In Paris, his work was exhibited in several group exhibitions (‘L’Equipe’, ‘Matiéres et Formes’) and Andre Lhote, among others, wrote about Friedlaender’s work in an article in La Nouvelle Revue Française as early as 1937.

After the Second World War, Friedlaender worked as a freelance artist in Paris and did illustrations for several magazines. From 1947 he was a regular exhibitor at the Salon de Maize (until 1969) and in 1948 he set up his studio “L’Ermitage” on Rue St. Jaques. Since then, Johnny Friedlaender has held numerous exhibitions in various parts of the world, including Europe, the United States, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Friedlaender also gathered around him a number of young artists from the so-called Friedlaender School in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s.

The exhibition of Johnny Friedlaender’s prints at the Pori Art Museum features 128 works from 1950-1982. The exhibition shows that over the years Friedlaender has remained true to his refined and personal language of form and colour.

Translated with DeepL