Sture Johannesson

Sture Johannesson was born in 1935 in Skanör, Sweden. He grew up as an orphan and described his childhood as turbulent. He later studied graphics and photography. Alongside his early artistic development, he worked as a photographer, printing press operator, and designer, trades that gave him technical grounding and access to visual communication. In 1966 he and his wife, textile artist Charlotte Johannesson, opened the Cannabis Gallery in Malmö. Located in a former dairy building, it became a hub for artists, political activists, and countercultural groups, as well as a center for radical publications, until police raids forced its closure in the early 1970s.

Johannesson came to prominence in the 1960s for his psychedelic posters and experimental films, which openly defended the use of psychotropic substances as a critique of state control. His works often provoked censorship, canceled exhibitions, and police intervention, revealing what he described as the “faces of the Watchmen,” the state’s instinct to repress opposition. He extended these provocations into media actions, happenings, and staged “mischief” performances, deliberately exposing the latent violence of authority. He also questioned cultural institutions directly, comparing official state art programs to the spirit of “degenerate art” campaigns, where authorities sought to suppress forms of expression they deemed unacceptable. Johannesson viewed art as a weapon against ideological conformity, aligning himself with underground movements that challenged authority through visual provocation, humor, and disobedience.

He explored new media by incorporating computers and video into his practice, pairing digital processes with investigations of altered consciousness. With Anne-Charlotte Johannesson, he co-founded the Digital Theatre, an experimental workshop that produced early plotter drawings and screen-based graphics at the Cannabis Gallery. He was among the first artists in Sweden to treat the computer as a creative instrument, using it alongside offset printing to expand the possibilities of visual production. His contributions included works for the international portfolio L’Artiste et l’ordinateur , 1979, one of which is now in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. In linking psychedelic culture with emerging digital tools, Johannesson opened new ground for artistic experimentation.

Johannesson’s work reached international audiences through exhibitions like tendencies 5 in Zagreb in 1973 and through his inclusion in the landmark portfolio L’Artiste et l’ordinateur, 1979, organized by the Centre Pompidou to present pioneering computer-based art. In Sweden, he remained marked by the 1968 Lunds Konsthall scandal, when his poster design led to confiscation, cancellation, and a prolonged boycott that shut down the institution. The controversy led to what he later described as decades of “internal exile” from the Swedish art establishment, during which his work was rarely shown in official venues. After 36 years, he returned to Lund in 2004 with Counterclockwise Circumambulation, a retrospective that reintroduced his work to a wider public. Johannesson passed away in 2018.