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Born the 21th of April 1952.

Nationality : Netherlander.

1983 : Master of Arts (Art History), University of Amsterdam, (V.U.). Master thesis : Oscar Schlemmer, the triadic ballet. "The Weimar Republic in the twenties, the Bauhaus school".

1982 - 1983 : Studied with the painter Thijs Willemse in Paris, quai de la Loire.

1983 - 1985 : National School of Fine Arts in Paris in the ateliers of the painters Zavarro, Amor and Mathey de l'Etang

Currently resides in France with her husband, Taher Jalily, a pianist, and her 2 children.
"I paint because it is the only means of expression that is in direct relation with my bowels, my heart, my brain and my lungs. I don't feel complete if I don't paint.
This is the interior necessity Kandinsky speaks about. Perhaps the deepest reason stay to in the shadow. What I feel is a great wish to communicate by line (the drawing) and colour (the painting).
I feel this as an immodest question; the existence of painting should be enough for a painter. He has not to explain the reasons of his choice. No answer can tell why you paint, it is the painting and the work that count most."


"I think that in my works, you will find two great axis :

  • 1. My relations with the tradition of the picture: There is a search for the caracteristics of the painting, first for the colour, the space and the form and then, especially in the pastels, for the relations between the background (the depth) and the line (the flat).

  • 2. A second axis is of philosophical order: My paintings illustrate the old opposition between Black and White, or more exactly between Good and Evil. Through this contrast there is a search for the Absolute. If my first paintings are born of a certain idea of Beauty, Utopia, Eden (Ithaque and Della Pittura), the last pastels convey only the anger before an evil as gratuitous and as harrowing as that in which we live to day in Algeria, in North Korea and in Sierre Leone."




    • Read the PaintingsDIRECT September 2000 Exhibition featuring JoHanna Boer.

  • Personal Exhibitions
  • 2004: L'Atelier, Dourdan, France


  • 2002:
  • - "The Gorges II", OTSI, Dourdan, France

  • - "The Gorges", Saint Germain les Arpajon, France

  • - "The Gorges", at De Gele Markies Gallery, Gorinchen, Netherland


  • 2000: "The Gorges", at the Maison du Tourisme, Dourdan, France


  • 1999: Selection of works from 1990 to 1999, "Collectif 125", Paris, France


  • 1998 :
  • - Elègie pour l'Algèrie, works on paper, Dourdan, France

  • - A White Stone, at the Cultural Institute of the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambrèsis, France.


  • 1997 :
  • - Ithaque Installation, Days of Patrimony in the donjon of Dourdan Castle

  • - Ithaka Installation, "Drie Enlingen" Manifestation in Ruimzicht villa, Doetinchen, Netherlands.


  • 1996 : Della Pittura, Cultural Center, Dourdan, France


  • 1995 : Ithaque, Cultural Center, Dourdan, France


  • 1993 : Dourdan's Song, Cultural Center, Dourdan, France


  • 1989 : Speculum Dioscuri, in Artist Studio, Paris.

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  • Group Exhibitions
  • 2004 : Salon de Montrouge, Montrouge, France


  • 1998 : De Hofmakerij III, Dordrecht, Netherlands


  • 1997 :
  • Salon de printemps, Cultural Center, Dourdan, France

  • Salon de la Palette d'Argent, Bruyères le Chatel, France


  • 1996 :
  • Salon de printemps, Cultural Center, Dourdan, France

  • Festival of Actual Art, Séran Castle, Echoué, France


  • 1995 : Salon des Bataves, Dutch Institute, Paris, France


  • 1994 : Salon de la Palette d'Argent, (Jury member) Bruyères le Chatel, France


  • 1993 :
  • Salon de printemps, Cultural Center, Dourdan, France

  • Salon de la Palette d'Argent, (First price) Bruyères le Chatel, France


  • 1992 : Blanche of Castille, Art Galery, Dourdan, France


  • 1991 : Open days for Artist Studios, Belleville, Paris, France


  • 1988 :
  • Salon of Young Painters, Angers, France

  • Salon of French Artists, Grand Palais, Paris, France


  • 1987 : Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, Paris, France



    •

  • Writings on Art
  • Art in the Factory, The Peter Stuyvesant Collection, Dutch Institute,Paris, 1986.

  • Letter from Paris, Contemporary Art situation in Paris, Metropolis M, N°1, Febr.1991.

  • A new generation of artists in The Netherlands, Beaux-Arts Magazine, N°22, March.1985.


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  • Awards
  • 1996 : Prix de la Municipalité de Dourdan, (Price of the City of Dourdan), Dourdan, France

  • 1993 : Prix de la Palette d'Argent, (Price of the Silver Palette), Bruyères le Chatel, France


    •

    • Selection of paintings from Johanna BOER

    Professional Experience

  • Since 1995 : Professor of painting and drawing for the city of Dourdan

  • 1991 - 1995 : Professor of painting and drawing

  • 1987 - 1994 : Professor of Art history in undergraduate schools in Paris

  • - Beaubourg Academie

  • - Higher School of Drawing and Design : Neufville Conte

  • - EFFET, School specialised in architecture, graphism and audio-visuals.

  • 1983 - 1991 : Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art at the Dutch Institute in Paris. Responsible for the relationship with the artists, the choice of their works for the exhibitions and for the writing of the catalogue texts.

  • 1979 - 1981 : Assistant Professor in the department of Art History, at the University of Amsterdam (V.U.)

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    Read the guestbook of Johanna BOER

    Sign the guestbook of Johanna BOER

    "Johanna BOER carries on her exploration of colour from the three primary ones: yellow, red and blue. You can feel a great liberty in her action. Her painting is softer, more aerial, ready for a new search on the form, the space and the matter. A poem of Kavadis, "Ithaque", has induced the artist to undertake, as Ulysse, "a travel in the canvas". Every painting of this series has a prevailing colour. The next series initiated in 1996 forms a link between colour and space and is searching for the relationship between the three elements. Johanna BOER practises the technique of scumble to obtain some effects of perspective and depth in the series "Della Pittura", which is a reflexion and a synthesis on painting."
    La voix, january 1998

    "The influence of Oscar Schlemmer, of his decentred compositions and of his sense of the distribution of space and motion, is still visible in the works of Johanna BOER. It appears when you question her personnal sense of space and form, her search for depth made by the patient work of scumble....In the paintings of Johanna Boer, the center recovers all its strength...
    She elaborates her colours by gradually moving from black and white to primary colours. She progressively penetrates a set of tones from which the absolute colour is excluded, as in the series of Ithaque and Della Pittura. This exploration of matter and colour is also an opening to the symbolics of the colours, more blue, red and yellow in Ithaque...But the geometric compositions always underlie the works. They recall the primary forms which are at the origin of line and of compound curves.... "
    Patrick Pittalis, january 1998