— Biography of George Johnson

“[Johnson] is one of Australia’s most committed and consistent abstractionists. His paintings are tough and uncompromising and possess a forceful clarity that promises those infinite relational variations which are both the essence and the lure of abstraction…” Jenny Zimmer, 2006


Born in New Zealand in 1926, Johnson was, together with Gordon Walters, a protege of Theo Schoon who introduced the Bauhaus, De Stijl, Constructivist and Suprematist movements to the pair.  He moved to Melbourne in 1951, sharing a studio with Walters.  He held his first solo exhibition in 1956 and was included in the touring Pacific Loan Exhibition of the same year.   Abstraction in 1950s Melbourne was not easily accepted and Johnson and his peers battled for ground against those who reacted against it, including The Antipodeans.  Johnson’s early works, made in a context of post-war material scarcity as well as a spirit of ‘make-do’ experimentation, are characterised by heavily textured surfaces - often employing collaged Hessian and house-paint enamel on Masonite board – and organic, interlocking cog-wheel forms.  The 1970s ushered in a series known as The Brown Paintings or Peruvian Paintings after a trip there in 1972; and from the 1980s onwards, his paintings and drawings consistently explore the infinite variations on the triangle, rectangle, circle and line - chiefly in primary colours.


"[Painting] is my way of seeing life, relationships, and things around me creatively - my way of seeking a creative world.  I enjoy looking into, under, further, in search of the vital organic life force in all things.  It is my way of imposing a sense of order which I find necessary."  The Artist, 1975


Johnson is represented in all major Australian public galleries and institutional collections. 
A major retrospective exhibition of his work was held at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery in 2002 and a monograph was published in 2006: Christopher Heathcote, George Johnson — World View, MacMillan, Melbourne, 2006.


“Ralph Balson, Godfrey Miller, John Passmore, Yvonne Audette, William Rose, Ian Fairweather, Roger Kemp, Leonard Crawford, Leonard French, Howard Taylor, George Johnson, and a few others constituted a formidable contingent who together produced one of the most consistent and coherent expressions of modernism in Australia.  Eccentric – and frequently self-isolated – they believed in the possibility of creating non-objective structures capable of communicating universal ideas.  Each at that time sought an idealised world-view – spiritual or political – rather than the more personally expressive Abstract Expressionism which in the 1940s and 1950s captured an increasing number of adherents and would divide the abstraction movement here – as it did in America.”  Jenny Zimmer, “George Johnson and Geometric Abstraction”, in Christopher Heathcote, George Johnson - World View, MacMillan, Melbourne, 2006, p 33

“His abstraction is still as strict and as sharp as ever, but is of that rare type which, whilst sticking to severe limits in shapes and tonings, offers an apparently limitless range of variation." Bill Hannan, exhibition review, The Bulletin, 1962

George Johnson CV

Alan McCulloch Abstracts cold warm July 12 1972

Andrew Christofides George Johnson Artist Profile November 2013 91 93

Anna Clabburn Resounding Crash of Symbols The Weekend Australian August 31 2002 13 2

Christopher Heathcote Two neglected visual pioneers review

Elwyn Lynn Abstraction Can Be Anathema The Weekend Australia August 23 1986

Elwyn Lynn Abstraction the art of many forms

Elwyn Lynn An Abstract Shelter from The Storm Australian 9 June 1984

Gary Catalano Variations on a recurring theme review

Jenny Zimmer George Johnson and Ineluctable Abstraction Art and Australia 24 no. 2 Summer 1986 reduced

New Abstraction RMIT 1965 1985 Leanoard Crawford George Johnson Grahame King RMIT Gallery 1 May 9 June 2007 exhibition catalogue reduced

Ronald Millar Drawn from the day to day... review

Sasha Grishin Consistent Visions The Canberra Times March 24 2007 15.

Sasha Grishin Giants of Geometric Abstraction The Canberra Times November 24 2014 6

Sasha Grishin Illustrating a philosophy Canberra Times October 11 1978

Susanna Short Artist has built a colourful world based solely on the rectangle The Sydney Morning Herald June 8 1984.