Carl Johan De Geer

Who is Carl Johan De Geer?

Baron Carl Johan Louis De Geer af Finspång is a Swedish artist, writer, musician and friherre of the De Geer noble family.

Carl Johan De Geer grew up in a castle in Skåne, in southern Sweden. He broke with his bourgeois background and became a leftist artist, and studied at Konstfack, University College of Art, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. He also exposed his grandmother's Nazi sympathies in a film called Mormor, Hitler och jag.

Most radical and provoking at that time was his 1967 painting of a burning Swedish Flag with the words KUKEN and "Skända flaggan" written on it. The painting was shown in an art gallery, but was immediately apprehended by the police. Carl Johan De Geer has written a number of books and was also a member of the Swedish radical prog-band Blå Tåget. He has been married to the artist Marianne Lindberg de Geer, since 1987.