Review by Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine. Photos by the author with permission from the museum.

Gunnlaugur Blöndal (1893-1962), “Blóm”/“Flowers”, oil on canvas.

The unfriendly winter days made me long for an escape in the soothing company of natural and man-made objects with divine beauty in the exhibition "Kyrralíf” (“Still Life") at Hafnarborg, the Hafnarfjörður Centre of Culture and Fine Art.

Ever since my school days, the thought of still life has produced an instinctive painful convulsion of boredom as an obligatory exercise in traditional art education.

But on second thought, such reaction is unfair considering the countless number of artists throughout history who have dedicated their entire careers to the tireless exploration of form and color in still life compositions.

It also provokes memories of the old-fashioned interior at the home for the elderly where I used to work and nostalgia for bygone times.

The origin of still life paintings can be traced back to ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman times and the Middle Ages. But the new technology and philosophy of the 20th century revolutionized representational art by deconstructing objects into an abstraction of simplified, flat outlines and bright, bold colors.

In other words, still life could be enjoyed not only by an audience with a more conservative taste, but also by appreciators of pure analytical and conceptual thinking, in a more contemporary design sense.

When you enter the big hall on the second floor of Hafnarborg, you will immediately be greeted by familiar works of old-school Icelandic masters such as Jóhannes Kjarval (1885-1972), Finnur Jónsson (1892-1989), Jón Stefánsson (1881-1962) and Gunnlaugur Blöndal (1893-1962), among others.

There is a historical note in the accompanying text of the exhibition saying that female artists in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century were not allowed to depict the naked human body—unless it was a statue—so they had no choice but to paint found objects in their homes and studio.

Louisa Matthíasdóttir (1917-2000), “Uppstilling með flösku”/“Still Life with a Bottle” (1984), oil on canvas.

Needless to say, female artists are also included in this exhibition such as Kristín Þorláksdóttir Bernhöft (1879-1957), Kristín Jónsdóttir (1888-1959), Karen Agnete Þórarinsson (1903-1992) and Júlíana Sveinsdóttir (1889-1966). Unfortunately, almost none of them are familiar to me, while their male contemporaries are household names in Iceland.

To my delight, my favorite Icelandic female painter Louisa Matthíasdóttir (1917-2000) is represented at the exhibition in two oil paintings and one pastel work in her typical style of uncluttered compositions with generalized forms and broad areas of color, although I mostly associate her art with landscapes and human subjects.

In the adjoining small hall, recent art of living artists freshens up the old-fashioned atmosphere from the previous hall.

Pétur Gautur (born in 1966), “Svarta herbergið”/“The Black Room” (2010), oil on canvas.

As I expected, I noticed works by the artist Péter Gautur (born in 1966), who indefinitely prefers the same repetitive subject of apples and bowls on a striped tablecloth while only varying the composition.

His painting “The Black Room” (2010) caught me by surprise, though, because there he overextends the restraints of his usual comfort zone by going into new territories by using a massive solid black background and an expressive chalk-like outline of a white chair a-la Miró.

I also found a painting by another of my favorite Icelandic painters, Húbert Nói (born in 1961). I did not expect to encounter his work at the exhibition because he is famous for simplified seascapes in invariable dark blue-green-black hues.

True to himself, the work “Málverk” (“Painting”; 1995) is executed in the same cold mysterious hues and unsentimental geometric style as I know from his other paintings.

Húbert Nói, “Málverk”/“Painting” (1995), oil on canvas.

Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson (born in 1953), whose surrealist oil paintings of naked men, fish and birds in typical Icelandic landscapes are well-known in Iceland and have been mentioned in my previous reviews “Revisiting Memory Lane” and “For the Love of Drawing”, gave me another surprise with two parallel elongated horizontal green canvasses scarcely adorned with a few vegetables in a realistic style, which were simply entitled “Upstilling” (“Still Life”; 2001).

To summarize my experience, I must admit that the mundane subject of this review has been the most uninspiring so far. I wonder if I am simply prejudiced because my restless and expressive spirit craves emotional extremes which simply cannot be satisfied in the stillness of still life art devoid of human presence and adventure.

However, in a purely pragmatic evaluation, there are enough participants and elements with unexpected twists to be enjoyed in the exhibition. To what extent is up to you.

The exhibition “Kyrralíf" ("Still Life”) runs until February 26, 2012.

Hafnarborg, the Hafnarfjörður Centre of Culture and Fine Art is located on Strandgata 34, 220 Hafnarfjörður.

Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine – kremenan (at) gmail.com
 
Kremena Nikolova-Fontaine is a passionate collector of art books, dedicating every spare moment to learn more about art while dreaming about having an exhibition of her own. She studied graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in Akureyri from 1999 to 2002. In college she realized that she didn’’t want to be a designer or commercial artist but rather an illustrator and writer. At the moment she’s experimenting with her first graphic novel.