Kroppens landskap: Atti Johansson

Kroppens landskap

curated by Lina Aastrup

The material, defined in form and substance, in danger and in hardness
so hard against the world’s soft bodies
A knee a foot a hand a heart and a head
What can I do

– From Atti’s diary, 1983

The exhibition title Kroppens landskap is borrowed from Atti’s close friend, the acclaimed Danish writer Kirsten Thorup. Thorup’s text, written for the exhibition Sken och verklighet in 1993 at Kulturhuset and Museum Anna Nordlander, captures the layered complexity of Atti’s imagery, where the inner and outer topographies of the body hold both vulnerability and strength.

Throughout her career, Atti worked thematically in series: Förbytta ting (Transformed Things), assemblages exploring the subconscious; Mekanisk/organisk (Mechanical/Organic), monumental public reliefs addressing the emerging computer technology; and the paintings of Ska skogens källa sina… (Will the Forest’s Source Dry Up…), focused on environmental destruction. While the 1960s and 70s were dominated by broad social issues, in the early 1980s Atti turned her gaze inward once again. After an accident left her bedridden for a long period, she read Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Literature was always central to her life, and in the classic tale she found a new theme: the vulnerable human being and the individual’s struggle with fear.

Just a year earlier she had taken part in a peace march from Copenhagen to Paris, organized by Women for Peace. The sight of exhausted feet and legs that had carried the women forward returned in many guises in her work thereafter. Events such as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the war in former Yugoslavia deepened the sense of a time in which nature, humanity, and women in particular were under severe pressure. The paintings that followed circle around this condition of exposure and helplessness, but also of hope. As she put it: “All my Don Quixote paintings are about getting people back on their feet, about gaining a foothold. And to gain a foothold is the same thing as to have faith.”

In these works, soft arms, hands, legs and feet struggle against a chaos of hard mechanical tools. Her once didactic visual style shifted towards greater freedom, with machine parts taking on increasingly abstract shapes. Atti herself called them “building blocks”. By the late 1980s, the elements were further abstracted. The symbolic colours that once marked the organic (blue) and the mechanical (yellow, orange, red, green) blend and are veiled by a white film. Threats to both human and nature are internalized and thus rendered invisible – like radioactive radiation or toxic pesticides in the forest.

In works such as Kroppens landskap and Kroppens situation we encounter a square, torso-like form enclosing a system of inner tissue and organs, seemingly compressed into too narrow a frame. Or perhaps they are maps of fields, hills, rivers and forests. In Under huden and Förnuftets och dårskapens dubbelbild appear the outlines of a head – brain convolutions, jaw, eyes. The language of Förbytta ting and Mekanisk/organisk re-emerges here, but in reduced, flattened, more intricate form.

During the 1990s the female body became more present than ever in Atti’s art. In År/Sarajevo we see an ageing, naked woman surrounded by a profusion of limbs and bones. “Women have had to pay so dearly; their bodies are so unprotected,” she said. During this period Atti often incorporated textiles into her paintings, creating a resistance for the brush as it moved across the surface. Works such as Livstycke gain an additional dimension of intimacy and sensuality through this technique.

Privately, Atti grappled with a body that often failed her and caused severe pain. As she wrote in her diary: “My paintings are affected by the fact that my body sometimes doesn’t function!! I constantly ask myself: how is the ‘inner world’… Is the feeling altered, or does the feeling allow itself to be dominated by bodily pain?”.

Her motifs combine elements of landscape, machine, and human figure. Beyond a struggle between entities, they hold a transgressive potential in which fixed identities dissolve and new relations become possible. Running through all of her work is the exploration of polarities: illusion and reality, the synthetic and the natural, destruction and creation. The pressing issues of her time ­– computer technology, environmental devastation, nuclear power, the peace movement and the situation of women – form the backdrop to her art.

Today, Atti’s work resonates with renewed urgency, reminding us that hope is found in the will to act ­­­– even when the outcome appears unattainable.

–  ­Lina Aastrup, 2025

Atti Johansson (1917 – 2003) was born in Kiruna and spent the majority of her life in Sollefteå. Her artistic practice was profoundly informed by the major socio-political and technological developments of the twentieth century, including the advent of computer technology, environmental degradation, nuclear energy, the peace movement, and the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

From 1954 to 1958, Johansson divided her time between family life in Sollefteå and formal studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Around 1967, she began developing a series of assemblages entitled Mekanisk/organisk (Mechanical/Organic), which examined the dialectical relationship between technology and the human body – specifically, the interplay between hard and soft materials, and the interface between artificial and organic systems. These works formed the basis for several public commissions, most notably a 65-metre-long wall installation entitled Ska tekniken ta makten? Ska datorerna styra oss? (Will Technology Take Power? Will the Computers Control Us?) in Umeå 1968 – 1972.

A consistent thread running throughout Johansson’s oeuvre is the exploration of polarities – illusion and reality, the synthetic and the natural, destruction and creation. Her work constitutes a sustained critical engagement with contemporaneous societal conditions, approached with both intellectual rigour and ethical clarity.

In the context of the present-day climate crisis and the accelerating digital transformation of society, Johansson’s artistic legacy acquires renewed urgency and relevance.

– Lina Aastrup, 2025

Atti's work is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet and Skissernas museum in Lund Sundsvalls museum, Norrköpings konstmuseum, Sollefteå kommun, Region Västernorrland, Västernorrlands museum, Helge Lindenssamling/Västerbottens museum, Jämtlands läns museum, Östergötlands museum, Museum Anna Nordlander, Statens konstråd and many more.

The last major exhibitions with Johansson were at Västernorrlands Museum in 2024, Belenius at Market Art Fair, Havremagasinet Konsthall and Belenius in 2025.

Photo by Jean-Baptiste Béranger