Johan Severtson

Johan Severtson was born in Duluth, Minnesota. He studied art and art history at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Soon after graduating in 1964, he and his partner, Susan Quenemoen Severtson, joined the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, where they taught and worked on cultural programs for the Ministry of Culture. He later pursued graduate studies in art at the University of Chicago and in graphic design at Yale University, completing an MFA at each institution. Based in Washington, D.C., Severtson has led the design program at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design for many years while maintaining an independent graphic design practice. His professional work spans exhibition, publication, and visual systems design for institutions such as the Yale Center for British Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. 

Severtson began working with computers in the late 1960s, developing programs that translated ideas of structure and proportion into sculptural form. At Franconia College in New Hampshire, he designed a system that generated two-dimensional components for plastic and metal constructions, specifying not only their shapes but also the printed graphics applied to their surfaces and the notches used to assemble them. The computer operated as a generator of possibilities, producing hundreds of permutations that could be tested and refined through fabrication. He approached computation as a way to think through form and structure, using programmed systems to connect visual experimentation with the principles of design. His work was first exhibited in 1968 in Cybernetic Serendipity at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and later featured in Exhibitions in Art and Technology at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He received a Ford Foundation grant to document and design a Kenneth Martin exhibition for the Yale Center for British Art. As his focus shifted from artmaking to education and research, Severtson became a central figure in shaping the field of design pedagogy, directing the program at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design and co-founding the Design Information Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study and preservation of design practice.