2012Visual Arts III - Sheetlets

The world-view of the second generation of Icelandic artists, the group that came to the fore during the second and third decades of the 20th century, differed greatly from that of the pioneers. Guðmundur Thorsteinsson (Muggur) (1891-1924) was a fine landscape painter, but his real bent was for pictures of ordinary people in all sorts of situations, real ones as well as the fantastic settings of folklore and fairy tales. These works are characterized by a gentle sense of humour and wistfulness. Kristín Jónsdóttir (1888-1959), the first Icelandic woman to turn professional painter created a concise pictorial world for herself out of everyday phenomena. The art of Nína Sæmundsson (1892-1965), Iceland`s first female sculptor, and Júlíana Sveinsdóttir (1889- 1966), also centers on personal solutions. Nína Sæmundsson`s reaction to the cataclysm of World War I was to turn her back on avant-garde art and seek to create modern sculptures based on traditional premises. Júlíana Sveinsdóttir’s started as a landscape painter, but in time she developed a personal view of nature, based on lyricism rather than austere formalism.