Sture Johannesson
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Sture Johannesson (1935 - 2018) was a Swedish artist. He designed the poster for the 1969 Underground exhibition at the Lund's Konsthall.
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Swedish profile (machine translation to English)
Nils Sture Ragnvald Johannesson , born 24 May 1935 in Vinslöv parish , died 17 January 2018 in Skanör , [ 1 ] [ 2 ] was a Swedish poster artist .
Sture Johannesson was an assistant to Georg Oddner in the early 1960s. From the mid-1960s, he made posters with political messages. In 1965, he made his first poster Pot Spikes Up! in 100 copies. Shortly afterwards, he did CIAO! , a calendar for 1966.
Sture Johannesson was married to the artist Charlotte Johannesson.
The exhibition Underground
Sture Johannesson's most famous poster is Freedom on the Barricades II [ 3 ] from 1968 for the exhibition Underground on Swedish underground aesthetics at Lund Art Gallery in 1969. The poster was a paraphrase of Eugène Delacroix's painting Freedom on the Barricades from 1830 and depicted a naked woman smoking a hash pipe . [ 4 ] Criticism was leveled at the exhibition, on the basis of the published poster, as inappropriate and containing drug propaganda, which led to the exhibition not being opened. [ 5 ] [ 6 ]
Art gallery director Folke Edwards also had to resign. [ 6 ] Torsten Andrée , chairman of the Art Gallery Board, justified the decision by saying that "Edwards approved the poster and had it published in the daily press." In connection with Andrée wanting to put a stop to the poster, according to Johannesson, he is said to have said "I stop the pipe", to which Johannesson replied in the press that "then it was time to turn on!". Andrée then accused Johannesson of conducting covert drug propaganda, to which Johannesson replied: “You should not accuse anyone of spreading drug propaganda when you yourself are chairman of Lund City's Drätselkammare, ie. LSD! ”. [ 7 ] Johannesson then used Andrée's statements in the poster Andrée Will Take A Trip! 1969.
Gallery Cannabis
In 1966, Sture Johannesson's wife Charlotte Johannesson acquired a studio where she could have her loom on the street level for a demolition house on Östra Långgatan 8 in Malmö. The room was first named Ateljé Cannabis, with later name changes to Cannabis workshop and Gallery Cannabis respectively. The gallery's windows were covered on the inside with cannabis plants. It sold Swedish and international political posters and magazines, such as the British International Times and printed matter from the Netherlands. Political leaflets were also distributed that often contained drug propaganda, some titles were from the fictional organizations "Abdulla Committee on Love-Ins" and "Swedish Hemp Growers' Association". The gallery was a meeting place for young people. WhenJefferson Airplane played in Copenhagen, guitarist Jorma Kaukonen visited the gallery. [ 8 ] Gallery Cannabis functioned both as a studio and exhibition space during the years 1967–1969. To distribute the posters, Sture Johannesson also traveled around markets such as Kivik's market . Puss magazine also distributed the posters.
Psychedelic Manifesto
Johannesson's posters are often complex, both in the choice of materials and in the color scheme. During the years 1965–1969, Johannesson printed six posters with a direct drug-related message. He published "Psychedelic Manifesto" in Ord och Bild , in which he expressed that psychedelic drugs had a positive effect on humans. He wrote there that "psychedelic drugs mean freedom, equality and brotherhood" and mentioned the drugs LSD , mescaline , psilocybin and hashish as cultural products. Johannesson probably did not mean that one should abuse drugs, but use them for the purpose of getting new ideas and developing oneself.
Pioneering work in digital art
Sture and Charlotte Johannesson were pioneers in Sweden regarding the use of computers to create art. [ 9 ] During the years 1971–1984, Sture Johannesson created almost 20 graphic sheets in editions of 50-250 copies. The motives varied; the earliest works were shown at the Computer Art Fair in 1974 and had a grid or wave pattern of printed lines that created shapes and characters. These graphic sheets had an optical effect and some of the parts seemed to be able to start moving or lifting from the background. To be able to handle the new computer technology for their works, Sture and Charlotte Johannesson had the help of Sten Kallin at IBM and Steve Wozniak at Apple. In the early 1980s, Sture and Charlotte Johannesson worked in their project Digitalteaten (the Digital Theater) with computer-generated images in one of the then most advanced Apple systems, and Sweden's first digital graphic studio, according to Steve Wozniak . [ 6 ] In 1983, Digitalteatern produced the first digital animation that was shown on Swedish national television, it was about the new opening of the Riksdag. [ 10 ]
From the 1960s onwards, Sture Johannesson and his posters have created scandals and sometimes been censored , also at the retrospective exhibition Counterclockwise Circumambulation at Lund Art Gallery in 2004. On this occasion, Johannesson had to choose between deleting certain works or closing the exhibition. [ source needed ] . At the exhibition, hemp plants , which were part of the exhibition, were seized by the police. [ 11 ]
Sture Johannesson also did album covers, for Peps Persson and Kal P. Dal , among others . His posters and paintings are represented in the Royal Library [ 12 ] , Moderna Museet , [ 13 ] Malmö konsthall , Museum of Modern Art [ 14 ] , Hallands kulturhistoriska museum [ 15 ] and Kulturen [ 16 ]
