Icelandic Art IX – SUM

The SÚM-group came into being in Reykjavík in the mid- Sixties and remained active well into the 1970s. The group may be regarded as the first consciously disruptive movement in Icelandic art, aiming its barbs at two local trends, landscape painting on the one hand and abstraction on the other. The SÚM artists themselves were a diverse bunch, many of them largely self-taught. SÚM artistic expression is partly borne out of the social and cultural turmoil of the late Fifties and early Sixties, not least the manifold challenges to the moral values of Western culture. A new generation of Icelandic artists was introduced to many of these ideas through Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth, who lived in Iceland for a time.

In Iceland, these ideas mostly manifested themselves as „New Realism“, which essentially meant that SÚM artists rejected painted or sculpted „copies“ of real things. Instead they sought to make use of real material and existing artefacts. Sigurður Guðmundsson (b.1942) assembles and photographs a selection of commonplace phenomena from nature. Hreinn Friðfinnsson (b.1943) uses an ordinary hand mirror to bring together both the macrocosmos and the microcosmos. Jón Gunnar Árnason (1931-1989) collects useless mechanical parts and turns them into an electrified pulsating heart. Róska‘s (1946-1996) painting reflects her everyday moods as well as her attitudes to femininity and sexuality. Most of the works produced by SÚM-artists are in effect existential queries in a new and unexpected guise. Though many of them were made from perishable materials, their influence is enduring. They are at the same time a journey ́s end and new beginning for Icelandic art.