somersault

Three new linocuts by Johanna Schartau are now online at ed-art.se. All have a connection to movement and gymnastics, something that is close to the artist's heart. Until the age of 16, Johanna Schartau trained every day and her love of gymnastics remains. 

- I love to do a handstand, it's a great feeling of weightlessness; that you can master the laws of gravity. 

As a child, Johanna Schartau dreamed of becoming a gymnastics teacher just like her grandmother, a woman she never met, but who she later in life portrayed in one of her films. Prior to the work on a public artwork for a gymnasium in Helsingborg, Johanna Schartau came to resume contact with her inner gymnast. On the facade are silhouettes of children leapfrogging and a girl hanging upside down, cut in metal. Johanna Schartau felt like continuing to work with these images and during a printing workshop in Barcelona she started carving on the linoleum plates that would result in the three new linocuts. 

The prints are printed by hand on Japanese paper made of bamboo.