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4. Johnson's development into a more primitive style aroused mostly favorable critical comment over the years in New York. Said A.F. Kruse in the New York Sun, "Seven years ago, Johnson... painted in the Scandinavian countries and came back with expressionistic marines of high esthetic voltage. More and more he has striven since then to obtain the significance of images in action with the least amount of physical to-do. Now with a palette of no more than four or five colors and using primed cardboard panels, he produces, with a naivete all his own, such diverse subjects as THE NATIVITY, LI'L SIS and MOON OVER HARLEM. He is definitely an American modern".

JOHNSON INTERESTS HIMSELF IN SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL TRENDS

The war and its activities with soldier and sailor entertainment, the Red Cross and related events caught Johnson's attention in the early 1940's and his story-telling, warm caricature-like pictures were widely shown. The year following his wife's death, in 1944, he visited his mother in Florence, S.C. "I don't like the South", he often said, and this was only his second trip there after his first European study tour. However, he did many delightful portraits of his family members and friends following this trip. The clean, crisp printed dresses of the women are done in great detail,  often with just a touch of the brush he adds a bow in the hair. They show the dignity of his folk-feeling and his complete delight in painting them. 

In the late 1946, he pack these and every other piece of his work plus some that his friends had, and returned to the Denmark he loved. As he left, Johnson seemed very strange to those who had known him. 

He exhibited these historical and political panels in Copenhagen in March of 1947 -- his last exhibit. "There is quite a bit of Matisse's worship of unrestricted colors in his pictures", said a critic of them. " But where Matisse is an aesthetician, Johnson goes further and shows us the working people of the southern states, the Negroes and their leaders, and their entire strangely colorful world... To William Johnson, social freedom is the greatest and most important need of mankind; for this reason he considers his series of paintings, 'FIGHTERS FOR LIBERTY' as some of his most important productions. His colors pan the whole gamut of the palette, and the decorativeness of his pictures is enhanced by his use of the ornaments and of his use and placement of the figures, which in many cases can be seen to have been influenced by Italian Gothic and primitive art".

A TALENT SHAPED BY WORLD IMPULSES
He has been called expressionistic in the vein of Van Gogh; in the matter of form, much that looks like "undigested Van Gogh"; "hot Van Gogh"; influenced by Van Gogh; and derivative of Cezanne, Soutine, Rouault, Rockwell Kent, Munch, and others, but there is always the added qualification of his own strong sophisticated yet primitive touch. His is a talent shaped and molded by world-wide impulses. 

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