Johnny Friedlaender biografia

Johnny Friedlaender is a Polish-born French naturalized engraver and artist. He was born in Pless, Poland, in 1912. He graduated from high school in Breslau, where he also attended the Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Otto Mueller.
In 1930, he moved to Dresden, staying briefly in Berlin and Paris, where in 1933 he was arrested as an opponent of the regime but released after a few months due to lack of evidence. In 1935, he fled to Czechoslovakia, settling in Ostrava, where he held his first solo exhibition of engravings.
In the following years, he made numerous trips between Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and France, where in 1939 he was arrested again and, after various ordeals, was confined in a series of concentration camps from which he would be finally liberated in 1944.
He moves permanently to Paris where he opens the engraving studio l’Ermitage in which he will collaborate with numerous young artists such as Arthur Luiz Piza, Brigitte Coudrain, Rene Carcan, Andreas Nottebohm, and Graciela Rodo Boulanger.
Engraving becomes his main expressive medium to the point of specializing in the technique of etching aquatint, of which he was a pioneer.
Simultaneously, he collaborates as an illustrator for various newspapers including Cavalcade and Carrefour. In 1947, he becomes a member of the Salon de Mai, a position he holds until 1969.
In 1948, he met the painter Nicolas de Staël and held an exhibition in Copenhagen at the Galerie Birch. The following year, he exhibited at the Galerie La Hune in Paris. In the subsequent years, numerous exhibitions followed in Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Rome, São Paulo in Brazil, and Paris. Johnny Friedlaender died in Paris in 1992.