Forty trees in the Torpe hills. Signed CJ. Oil on canvas. 45 x 66 cm. Claus Johansen (1877•1943) occupies a special position in Danish art history. As an autodidact artist and with a life on the edge of the established art environment he developed a personal and distinctive imagery in which the landscape was interpreted through simplified forms, distinctive color attitudes and a special sense of composition. Johansen was born in Agerup at Holbæk in 1877 and settled in 1924 permanently on Bornholm, where he found inspiration in the island's landscapes and wondrous nature. Although he had contact with Oluf Høst among others, he was outside the established artistic circle on the island, following both artistically and socially his own paths. Especially the cultivated landscapes with fields, roads and scattered settlements became recurring motifs in his painting. Through stylized forms and a gradual dissolution of naturalistic details, Johansen created compositions where the landscape balances between the recognizable and the abstract. His often small paintings testify to an immediacy and artistic freedom that separates him from several modernist painters of the time. Despite its modest position in contemporary art life, Claus Johansen has since been highlighted as a remarkable figure in Danish modernism. Already in 1949 the art critic Pierre Lübecker described him as one of the finest autodidacts in Danish art. Minor cracklings and peelings.