Stefan Johansson
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There are nights when there is such a special shine from the moon that it gives a feeling of turning night into day. It is exactly such moonlight that shines in Stefan Johansson’s “Lykta i måndager” (“Lantern in moonlight”), painted in Karlstad, Värmland 1934.
One might wonder how the artist went about achieving such a painting? Well, he said that he went out in the evening or at night and stood in front of the motif to investigate what colours such light consisted of. He saw how thousands of tiny particles in the air vibrated and moved in white, yellow, blue-green and other colours. The people of Karlstad who saw him out in the evenings and at night, tell of how he stood for hours looking at a street-lamp. What he was doing, he himself said, was reading-in the light, colours and reflections. When he had totally registered such in his retinas, he went into the studio and painted what he had seen outside.
“Lykta i måndager” is a tranquil picture, but it is not without content. When Stefan Johansson saw colour particles in the light, it was also an experience of what he called in a poem, “heavenly light”. The inclusion of religious atmosphere and mysticism is considerable in his pictures.
The artist was not born a Värmlander. He was born outside Linköping in 1876, but lived both in Värmland and Stockholm. He died in 1955.
Stefan Johansson always painted realistically. Light fascinated him. During the 1920-30’s he painted a whole series of paintings with light from street-lights. Nearly all of his pictures are of water-colour on canvas, a technique that contributes to their uniqueness.
