FREEDOM ON THE BARRICADES
Year: 1968
Size: 62 x 85 cm / 24 x 33 in
Condition: Very Good
Origin: Sweden
Artist: Sture Johannesson
Price: SOLD
Printer: Permild & Rosengreen
Part of the Danish Collection.
The poster Johannesson made for the exhibition Underground will take over at Lund’s art gallery in 1969. The poster can be seen as a paraphrase of the artist Eugène Delacroix’s painting Freedom on the Barricade from 1830, which can be seen in the upper right corner. In contrast to the violent French Revolution, Sture Johannesson wanted to propagate a peaceful revolution. Therefore, he replaced the rifle and flag, symbols of violence and nationalism, with the peace pipe and a large round cockade in the colors of the tricolor with the text Revolution Means Revolutionary Consciousness. And instead of the bare breasts, in Delacroix’s painting, the woman would be completely naked, symbol of total freedom. The model was the then 21-year-old Ninna Ljung whom Johannesson photographed on a forest slope in Torna, Hällestad. After the poster became public, Ninna Ljung was fired from her job at Ringbaren in Malmö. The poster was banned by the art gallery’s board as an official poster for the exhibition on the grounds that it was “an unadulterated propaganda for hashish smoking”. Johannesson replied in the magazine Se in 1968: “I’m going to make a counter-report against a poster with Lill-Babs, where she sits and drinks Gevalia. She looks incredibly happy. Coffee alone doesn’t make you so damn happy. She must have cleaned the cup”. The row over the poster caused the art gallery manager Folke Edwards to resign in protest and the exhibition was closed even before it opened.
The exhibition instead moved on to Södertälje Art Gallery in April 1969, but then with a new exhibition poster and with everything that could be perceived as drug propaganda removed. (see other poster on the website, “Underground - Södertälje Konsthall” )
After the events at Lund’s art gallery, Johannesson chose to sell his posters at Kivik’s market in 1969 for ten kroner each.