Johnny Friedlaender biography

Johnny Friedlaender is a Polish engraver and artist naturalized French. He was born in Pless in Poland in 1912. He graduated from high school in Breslau where he also attended the Academy of Fine Arts where he studied with 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, following various vicissitudes, closed in a series of concentration camps from which he was finally freed in 1944.
He moved permanently to Paris where he opened the engraving atelier l'Ermitage where he collaborated with numerous young artists such as Arthur Luiz Piza, Brigitte Coudrain, Rene Carcan, Andreas Nottebohm and Graciela Rodo Boulanger.
Engraving became his main expressive means, so much so that he specialized in the technique of aquatint etching of which he was a pioneer.
At the same time he collaborates as an illustrator for various newspapers including Cavalcade and Carrefour. In 1947 he became a member of the Salon de Mai, a position he held 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 following years, numerous exhibitions followed in Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Rome, Sao Paulo in Brazil and Paris. Johnny Friedlaender dies in Paris in 1992.