Frithjof Tidemand-Johannessen

Carl Frithjof Tidemand-Johannessen (11 September 1916 – 9 October 1958) was a Norwegian designer, illustrator, writer, author and craftsman. He is best known today for his woodcut prints and for the decorative works on the Torshov Church in Oslo.

Tidemand-Johannessen received his artistic education at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry 1935–37 under Per Krohg, and made his debut at Høstutstillingen in Oslo in 1936. Tidemand-Johannessen then began studies at the Berlin University of the Arts, but was expelled by the Nazi management of the academy after three weeks for allegedly being a "Degenerate artist". After that, he participated in an illegal, underground academy in Berlin for about a year, and made study trips to Austria and Hungary.

During World War II, Tidemand-Johannessen participated in the defense of Norway in 1940, and then in the Norwegian resistance to the German occupation. He was arrested in February 1941 by the Nazi authorities. For a year and a half, between February 1941 and July 1942, he was being moved between the prisons in Åkebergveien and Møllergaten 19. Then, from 9 July 1943 onwards he was imprisoned at Grini concentration camp.

Tidemand-Johannessen was editor-in-chief of the magazine Avant-garden, which was published by the Young Communist League of Norway until the liberation from German occupation in 1945. He continued in this position when the magazine became legal after the war. In the late 1940s he also served as a culture journalist/writer for Friheten, the party's daily newspaper. After the war Tidemand-Johannessen taught for a while at the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry, and played a central role in the idealist-communist circles at the academy up until the Furubotn Purge within the Communist Party of Norway in 1949.

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