Johnny Friedlaender (26 December 1912 – 18 June 1992) was a leading German/French 20th-century artist, whose works have been exhibited in Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Johnny painted using oils and watercolors but his preferred medium was aquatint etching which is a technically difficult artistic process, of which Friedlaender has been a pioneer.
After two years in a Nazi concentration camp, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where he settled in Ostrava, where he held the first one-man show of his etchings.
After freedom in 1944, Friedlaender began a series of twelve etchings entitled Images du Malheur, with Sagile as his publisher.
In 1948, he began a friendship with the painter Nicolas de Staël and held his first exhibition in Copenhagen at Galerie Birch.
By 1953 he had produced works for a one-man show at the Museum of Neuchâtel and exhibited at the Galerie Moers in Amsterdam, the II Camino Gallery in Rome, in São Paulo, Brazil and in Paris.
In 1959 he received a teaching post awarded by UNESCO at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro.
From his atelier in Paris Friedlaender instructed younger artists who themselves went on to become noteworthy, among them Arthur Luiz Piza, Brigitte Coudrain, Rene Carcan, Andreas Nottebohm, and Graciela Rodo Boulanger.