Johnny Friedlaender Biography
Johnny Friedlaender was born in Germany in 1912 and studied at the School of Fine Arts in Breslau, where one of his professors was Otto Mueller. From 1930 to 1933 he lived in Dresden, with brief stays in Berlin and Paris. In 1933 he was interned in a Nazi camp, but was amnestied and found refuge first in Czechoslovakia and then in Holland. In 1937 he moved to Paris, where he was arrested along with other foreign refugees. Friedlaender joined the English army and was subsequently taken prisoner, but managed to escape. After the end of the war, he settled in Paris and opened the Hermitage, an engraving studio. He became friends with Jacques Villon and in 1966 was appointed professor at the Salzburg Academy. During this period he resumed painting, which he had abandoned in the 1940s. Friedlaender participated in numerous group exhibitions and his first solo exhibition was organized in 1949 at the La Hune Gallery in Paris. Printmaking, based on German Expressionist forms, quickly evolved into a colorful abstraction characterized by multiple-inking marks and engravings, similar to Hayter's technique. After a turbulent life path, Friedlaender has become one of the most recognized contemporary masters of engraving, with a technique always focused on the essences of things and people, and with a constantly poetic and evocative research. Johnny Friedlaender died in 1992, but the La Hune Gallery and its director Bernard Gheerbrant remained faithful to him until the end.
