Biography

Janeric Johansson

  • Född 1950 i Vetlanda, bosatt i Malmö sedan 1969
  • Autodidakt (självlärd)
  • Har arbetat som konstnär på heltid i 57 år
  • Har haft över 200 separatutställningar i ett 20-tal länder bl a:
    • Artist House, Jerusalem 1980
    • Jönköpings Läns Museum, 1981
    • Lillehammers Konstmuseum, Norge 1982
  • 1984 hade han sin största utställning någonsin på Lunds Konsthall där han slog nytt publikrekord med 24.000 besökare
  • 1999 hade han soloutställningar i Tyskland, USA och Kina, alltså på tre kontinenter samtidigt.
  • 1990 ställde han ut i Riga, Lettland, en utställning som blev delaktig på högsta nivå vid frihetskampen mot Sovjetunionens ockupation
  • 1992 när Sovjetunionen upphörde ställde han ut i St. Petersburg på Ryska Museet.
  • 1999 Hade han sin första utställning i Kina där han i den kinesiska kontexten med sina tredimensionella målningar blev en avantgarde konstnär.
  • Sedan 2004 har han haft en studio i Kunming Kina och arbetat två månader om året, och varit gästföreläsare på 25 0lika universitet i världens största land.

Utställning på Konstnärshuset Svavel 2025

  • En del av de målningar som visas på Galleri Svavel är gjorda i Kina och tidigare visats på museer och gallerier där. Tack vare den kinesiska konstnären Liu Liten som numera bor i Aderslöv utanför Gränna, har Janerics målningar skickats til Sverige med båt genom Röda havet, samtidigt som terroristerna i Jemen skjutit mot utländska fraktbåtar, men kom fram efter 3,5 månader i oskadat skick.
  • Den största målningen som är 3 meter hög och 4 meter bred ”Tunnel Light”, kommer att visas på Jönköpings läns Museum i höst oktober och november 2025.

Priser och utmärkelser

  • Andra Pris vid Internationella Grafikbiennalen i Cabo Frio, Brasilien 1983
  • ”Hanga Annual Award”. Japan Print Association Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo. 1986
  • Hedersprofessor vid Ryska Museets skola, St Petersburg 1992
  • Hedersprofessor vid Yunnan Art University, Kunming Kina. 1999
  • Malmö stads Kulturstipendium
  • Jönköpings Läns Kulturstipendium
  • Flertal Statliga kulturstipendier

Some thoughts about my art

I have now been working full time as an artist for more then 50 years. One of the reasons is that I never was accepted by the art schools in Sweden. So I am an autodidact.

The first 12 years I was working with just black and white pencil drawings. During that time I was only exhibiting in Sweden and Scandinavia, but after a longer stay in Israel 1980 with two exhibition I have made more exhibitions abroad than in Sweden. I never followed the main roads of how to make a career as an artist, but gone through doors when they have been opened up for me, and found myself exhibiting in countries which has been in a special situations of changes, like Israel, Latvia, Russia, North Africa and China. In many of these countries I have made exhibitions which have been dealing with the countries special situation. Already from the beginning I have realized that these exhibitions shouldn’t make me rich. It has more been the opposite. But without these exhibitions my life should have been very poor. The possibilities to meet an audience who have been touched by my art and in many ways have make a difference, have made my life as an artist more meaningful.

In the beginning of my time as an artist I was expecting every viewer to experience the same thing as I have been thinking. But if a painting says the same thing to everyone it’s  just propaganda. True art is a language which talks different to different people, because of our experiences and background. Because of that my paintings are not finished before they have met its audience. And for me it is very important to be present in my exhibitions as much as possible to meet with the people, listen to others point of view and maybe first then realize what I have done.

I also want to involve the audience in my art. It is not possible to be passive when you looking to my art. You must move your whole body, and first then my art is working. When you move in the room you discover that the paintings change completely up to 5 times and you have to change your first impression when you become a part of the artwork. This way working very well even in a country like China, where I cant communicate because of the language. I have found out that sometimes it works even better in China than in the west.

To make these 3 dimensional artworks I’m using galvanized metal. To make it possible to paint on the metal I first use saltacid. The metal itself reflect the light and I use this as a quality in my works. I like to make different expression in the same artwork, spontanious paintings, sometimes with abstract forms, mostly done with acrylic, realistic pencil drawings mixed with oil, and sculptural elements. The last years I have combined these paintings with acrylic mixed with sand to create another structure.

After a while I made bigger and bigger paintings on metal and I called them”heavy metal pantings”. But the last years I have changed my way of working and made most of my big paintings on canvas with some smaller parts of metal.

The drawings of horses you can see in my paintings are mostly symbols for people.

I’m going  out from ideas which I found interesting and hope it can be interesting for other people too. But I also built my paintings for a special room. The space of an art gallery gives me ideas to create, the sizes and the compositions, and where in the world it is located also influence the result.

I like to make paintings out of words.  During the years I have used different language as Latin, Chinese, Hebrew, English, German, Russian and Arabic. Many of my titles are also  a play with words and very often the beginning of an idea.

Drawings 1968-1980

The first 12 years as an artist I didn’t feel that I had any sense for colours so I was just working with black and white pencil drawings.  I also made very big drawings, up to 6 meter long to show that drawings could be an expression for itself without just be a step to make a painting or a sculpture. I developed a special technique where I was using an erasor machine, going into two directions, starting with a grey surface taking back the white and made the darker areas with pencil.

Paintings on paper 1980-1990

After a longer stay and two exhibitions in Israel 1980 I decided when I came back to start working with paintings and colour again. I continued to work on the same paper as my drawings and found out an own tecnique where I could use a similar way as in my drawings using the erasor machine even in the oil.  Very often I combined drawings and oil , abstract and realistic elements in the same artwork.

Paintings on canvas

In 1990 I start to make some bigger paintings on canvas. It was mainly paintings in acrylic combined with some details made in oil.

Paintings on metal 1993 – now

For a long time I had experimented with three dimensional paintings on paper. But when I found out that I could work on metal instead it opend up a new dimension in my work. Even here I combined many different expressions in the same artwork.  Spontanious abstract paintings together with realistic drawings, 3 dimensional elements and up to 5 different angles in the same art work.