CREATING THE SELF

expressionism in Icelandic painting 1915–1945

June 23 – September 10, 2017

Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir

The exhibition Creating the Self – expressionism in Icelandic Painting 1915-45 explores how the various threads of new artistic trends collectively termed expressionism spread to Iceland in the early decades of the 20th century. The works are all from the period that begins before World War I, when Iceland had gained Home Rule after centuries of Danish rule, and concludes with the end of World War II, shortly after the foundation of the Republic of Iceland. That period spans thirty eventful years, when Icelandic art history is an integral element in the nation’s political and cultural progress towards autonomy during the interwar years. During the period of Home Rule before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, most of the pioneers of modern Icelandic art were living and working in Copenhagen – Iceland’s de facto capital during the colonial era. Jóhannes S. Kjarval, Kristín Jónsdóttir and Júlíana Sveinsdóttir were all students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts during the war years; and Guðmundur Thorsteinsson, known as Muggur, was about to graduate from the Academy, having moved to Copenhagen with his family at the turn of the century. Jón Stefánsson had never studied at the Royal Academy, but he had lived in Copenhagen longer than any other Icelandic artist; he had also been in Paris for four years before the war, after which he spent a winter in Iceland. Soon after the end of the war in 1918, Jón Þorleifsson,

Ásmundur Sveinsson and Finnur Jónsson joined the Icelandic artists in Copenhagen; but the latter two did not stay long: Ásmundur went to Stockholm and then Paris, while Finnur headed for Berlin and Dresden. The Icelandic artists who had been in Copenhagen during World War I stayed on for some years, but by 1925 all but Júlíana Sveinsdóttir were back in Iceland. Muggur had died in 1924, aged only 32.

At around that time a new generation of Icelandic artists were coming of age – all born at the start of the 20th century. Gunnlaugur Scheving, Þorvaldur Skúlason, Snorri Arinbjarnar and Jón Engilberts were keen to learn from their elders, and sought their guidance – not least from Jón Stefánsson – when deciding where to pursue studies abroad. By 1930 these young artists were all in Copenhagen. The latter two, Snorri and Jón Engilberts, also went to Oslo, the home town of Edvard Munch. Þorvaldur too went to Oslo, and later lived in Copenhagen and Paris. Svavar Guðnason went to Copenhagen in the 1930s; unable to leave for the duration of World War II, when Denmark was under German occupation, in due course he brought fresh new artistic trends to Iceland after the war.

Of the younger generation of artists, only Jóhann Briem went to Germany. He was in Dresden when Hitler rose to power. All these artists gained first- hand experience of the work of the expressionists who turned the European art world upside-down in the early 20th century. But the degree of influence of these European radical artists on the Icelandic artists was variable; and the impact merged with other trends in the zeitgeist. In some cases it took them many years – even decades – to work through all the influences. The circumstances of Icelandic artists varied in many ways from those of their European colleagues; and Iceland’s progress towards full independence from Danish rule also made its mark upon their artistic ideas. They were engaged in personal struggles, as artists, but they were also representatives of a nation in formation. Iceland had gained Home Rule in 1904, and in 1918 it became a sovereign nation, though still sharing a king with Denmark. To many Icelanders, the next step was clearly to break away and found a republic.

The ideal of the free autonomous artist in a free country, the independent art of a free nation, was thus bound up with an ideology that demanded personal expression from artists, while also requiring them to be representatives of their nation. And the latter demand reflected the young nation’s need for development – contrary to the iconoclastic ideology of expressionism that upheld free expression and candour. The expressionists saw themselves as inter- national, yet they could not escape their own national roots, and that is seen in the differing ideas about the nature of expressionism in Germany and France, that dominated artists’ ideas throughout Europe. All these ideological, political and artistic conflicts – that took place in the artist’s studio in the confrontation with subjects, colours and forms, and in the public sphere, in reviews of exhibitions and in press articles – are reflected in the works of the Icelandic artists.

The works selected for the exhibition Creating the Self are all by artists who had first-hand experience of the works of European expressionists, and affiliated themselves to that movement. The paintings display clear evidence that the artists had closely studied

the work of their foreign colleagues: they appraised them, were influenced by them, and strove to make that influence their own. The works in the show display that process, and at the same time a certain evolution that took place in Icelandic art. The works displayed are also intended to illustrate how the Icelandic artists were influenced by each other, at the same time as they were seeking to adapt the themes of the foreign expressionists to Icelandic reality.

German and French expressionism

Expressionism, as manifested first in French and German art in the early 20th century, was typified by radical works by artists who sought to overturn the art of the time. Older artistic movements such as romanticism, naturalism and impressionism, which had in their time been deemed radical, had drawn attention to nature, seeking to present it as we perceive it. The expressionists, on the other hand, rejected the reverence of the romantic, turned their backs on the precise drawing of naturalism, and used colours that were in sharp contrast to the natural palette of the impressionists. The first generation of expressionists in Europe were in revolt against a static society, seeing the art of the time as stagnant, and too focused on external models. They sought to express their emotions and state of mind, thus kicking over the traces of bourgeois values and civilisation, which they saw as quashing the individual’s natural urges and desires. Turing their gaze inwards, they adopted new and revolutionary methods of creating art, by turning the received norms upside down. They preached a revolution in art, hoping that social revolution would follow. Both Italian and German expressionists initially welcomed war, but after experiencing the destructive horrors of World War I they changed their minds. Hence the works of artists of the inter- war period, who had been influenced by the first expressionists, were less radical than those of the pioneers; but they reflect, nonetheless, new attitudes to art. The art of the interwar years had elements of a return to the classical, while continuing to address the issues of the day; and it was characterised by the individual artist’s personal vision, whether he/she looked inwards, or outwards into society.

Expressionism as a movement has mainly been identified with German art; but in the early years of the 20th century expressionism spread widely through mainland Europe, as international travel was facilitated by the railway network, and new ideas were disseminated via books and periodicals. The expressionists in their turn had been influenced by the ground-breaking work of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who lived and worked in France, and the emotional expression in the art of the Norwegian Edvard Munch. Other influences were French artists Paul Gauguin and Robert Delaunay, who had himself been influenced by his Russian wife, Sonia Delaunay, and the Belgian James Ensor. In the works of these artists the expressionists discerned unflinching expression of painful emotions and circumstances, often intensified by provocative use of colour. Euro- pean cities were depicted, as were exotic cultures perceived as primitive; and that was reflected in the expressionists’ choice of themes and their form of expression in their work – which were largely dis- missed by contemporaries as “not art.” This rebellion against received values was manifested in various ways, in art that emerged more-or-less simultaneously in two German cities and in Paris.

Paris had been the acknowledged centre of the European art world in the 19th century, attracting artists from far and wide to spend time in the city. In 1905, when a group of French artists showed works that were deemed absurd and scandalous, they were called les Fauves (wild beasts). The leader of the fauvist movement was Henri Matisse, who would later be the mentor of Icelandic artist Jón Stefánsson. At around the same time a group of young artists, inspired with a shared vision of art, established the group Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden, Germany, while another group with similar ideas was founded shortly afterwards in Munich: Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Artists from both German groups would later go to Berlin, where they were received by a man named Herwarth Walden. Walden’s name is closely identified with expressionism, as he played a major role in its success and expansion. He had founded the periodical Der Sturm in 1910, and two years later he opened a gallery of the same name. The periodical and gallery served to promote and publicise the works of German, French and Italian expressionists – such as futurists and cubists. The first exhibition at Der Sturm presented works by the members of the Blue Rider, together with Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka. Walden made a point of showing international art, thus stressing that modern art was above nationalism and politics. In order to win support for the ideas and artistic philosophy of expressionism, Walden organised touring exhibitions whose itinerary included Copenhagen, at the time when young Icelandic artists were studying there. Der Sturm and Herwarth Walden became renowned throughout Europe; but his reputation declined somewhat after World War I, not least in the Nordic countries, as the exhibitions held by Der Sturm in Copenhagen during the war were believed to have been a front for German espionage and propaganda.

Walden’s efforts to highlight the transnational- ism of expressionist art met with a mixed reception. Even French artists who had inspired their German colleagues were expressing the view, as early as 1912, that expressionism had all the characteristics of German art – that it was a manifestation of German barbarism, the antithesis of French refinement, and thus of European civilisation. French artists distanced themselves from the movement, and the same was true of Danish artists who had previously been impressed by the radical art of the Der Sturm shows. Even Matisse dissociated himself from the fauve, publishing in 1908 an essay on art in which he propounded his new ideas. The essay caused a sensation, as Matisse had recently achieved European renown for his art. Matisse called for artists to follow a middle path between the classical tradition and modern expression. His change of views was partly attributable to a retrospective of Paul Cézanne’s art in Paris in 1907, which established the artist as one the major influences in modern European art.

In order to spread his message, Matisse founded an academy in Paris, which he ran from 1908 to 1911. Most of the students were Nordic and German artists, and this met with disapproval from Matisse’s opponents in Paris. But that was not the main reason why Matisse closed the academy down – that was because he found that most of his students simply wanted to imitate his art. With Matisse’s renunciation of violent expressionism and rising nationalism in France and German in the years before World War I, before long expressionism was seen as exclusively German. It made little difference that radical movements such as Italian futurism and French cubism, as well as fauvism, had originally been part of the broad church of the expressionists. In both France and Germany disputes had arisen about expressionism, and these spread their influence all over Europe. One aspect of the debate outside France and Germany focussed on whether artists of other nations were susceptible to German or French influence. The conflict became even more rancorous after Germany suffered both military and artistic defeat in 1918, while Paris remained the mecca of modern European art.

Expressionism in Icelandic art

Disputes over the virtues of expressionism reached Iceland too, appearing in various guises. Icelandic intellectuals who had studied in Copenhagen or at German universities were well equipped to access information and familiarise themselves with the discourse; and after the foundation of Listvinafjelagið (Friends of the Arts) in 1916 debates on the subject took place at their meetings. The most detailed discussion of expressionism in Iceland at that period is found in two lectures given by academic Alexander Jóhannesson in 1920 and 1922. The former lecture connects the discourse in Iceland with Danish debate at the time, as it is based on an essay by Danish bacteriologist Carl Julius Salomonsen, which sparked heated controversy about expressionism and modern art in Copenhagen in 1919-20. Those writings, together with the suspicion that Walden had been a German spy, throw light on a notorious dispute carried on in the pages of daily Morgunblaðið in 1925 between the newspaper’s editor Valtýr Stefánsson and artist Finnur Jónsson. Finnur had trained in Germany after World War I, and his work had been shown by Der Sturm shortly before he returned to Iceland. He had been a student of Kokoschka, and had met many avant-garde European artists during his time at Der Weg, an art college run by Edmund Kesting, a close friend of Herwarth Walden. Although Icelanders were generally well disposed towards Germany and Germans during the interwar years, and fostered cultural links between the nations,

the same was not true of the artists who had been studying in Copenhagen during World War I; they were influenced by the discourse in Denmark and by Danish artists, who looked to France for role models, and felt that in art they had more in common with the French than the Germans. Valtýr Stefánsson was well connected with Icelandic artists through his wife, painter Kristín Jónsdóttir, and so he was familiar with the debate. He disapproved of Finnur’s German connections for two reasons: Finnur had studied among the “cold-blooded” Germans, and in addition had showed his work with Walden, who was believed to have exploited artists for political and commercial ends.

The relationship between the first generation of Icelandic artists and the European avant-garde and expressionism was also informed by the paradigm shift that swept through Europe following the end of World War I. Jóhannes Kjarval had arrived in Copen- hagen shortly before Walden’s exhibition of Italian futurists opened at Den Frie Udstilling in 1912, and he saw the show. In a press interview a decade later he said that the “effect had cascaded over him like a waterfall.” Among the works that so impressed Kjar- val was La Dance du Pan Pan by Italian Gino Severini and the influence is manifested in Journey to Heaven (1919-20), a small painting on an entirely different theme, and a watercolour, Battalion (1918). The futurist approach enabled Kjarval to disrupt forms without abandoning figurative subjects, and that would contribute to the way he later painted scenes of lava fields and mystical creatures in the landscape.

Finnur Jónsson’s abstracts from the Dresden years, Die of Destiny and Ode to the Moon, are also grounded in analytical thinking, as seen in the works of the futurists and cubists, although his works have a different character. These are Finnur’s best-known works, but at the same time they have been more problematical for scholars than any other works by Icelandic artists. They tend to overshadow Finnur’s other work, and the way his art evolved after he returned to Iceland. The oldest example of Finnur’s work in this exhibition, Lunar Eclipse (1923), slightly pre-dates the works mentioned above, and illustrates how he was grappling with new ideas. Other works in the show are of later date, showing how he worked with expressionist ideas and sought to adapt them

to his own experience. Morning at Sea (1927), for instance, depicts a familiar Icelandic theme, but the colour palette is unconventional and provocative. Further experiments with colour and theme are seen in a series of watercolours of the interior highlands of Iceland – which he developed further in oil paintings Hagavatn Lake (1929) and Craters by Laki (1936). Like Kjarval, Finnur experimented with different styles and forms, but it is more difficult to gain an overall view of Finnur’s oeuvre, because his career has never been studied as a whole. Little attention has been paid, for instance, to Finnur’s influence on other artists, although evidence indicates that Svavar Guðnason was impressed by his expressionistic use of colour. Little is known of any connection between Svavar and Finnur, but Finnur had an ongoing relationship with Jóhann Briem, who had been in Dres- den after him. They did not study under the same maestro, and Jóhann was invariably more cautious, and took a long time to develop his own personal visual world. Jóhann Briem’s Summer Day and Young Woman (1941-43) are in a sense typical of the period of searching in his art after he returned to Iceland in 1934, while the themes have similarities to the work of Finnur Jónsson and Jón Stefánsson. They also have features in common with Jón Engilberts, whose relationship with expressionism is no less interesting that the others. Jón studied initially in Copenhagen at around the same time as Gunnlaugur Scheving; these two artists, both admirers of Munch, were entirely different in their art. From Copenhagen Jón Engilberts moved on to Oslo, where he studied for two years at the National Academy of the Arts and spent long hours at the Munch Museum. His tutor in Oslo was Axel Revold, who had been a fellow- student of Jón Stefánsson at Matisse’s academy in Paris 1908–11.

Jón Stefánsson was among Matisse’s Nordic students, and he rapidly familiarised himself with his theories. Jón’s career differed from that of the other Icelandic artists, as unlike them he had studied at the Latin School (now Reykjavík High School) before turning to art. That academic background no doubt explains Jón’s reputation for erudition and theoretical knowledge. Jón has often been said to have destroyed most of his works from his time in Copenhagen and Paris, because he was a perfectionist and perhaps because his early works were not good. But there are indications that he was also conscious of Matisse’s requirement for his students to approach art on their own terms. Rainbow (1915) is a case in point, displaying expressionist influence in the pastoral theme, as well as the use of colour and the drawing of the figures. The piece differs, how- ever, from Matisse’s work, which generally depicts sensuality and bountiful nature, as Jón also portrays working people, as if to remind himself that his roots lie not in urban France but in rural Iceland. Matisse’s influence is also seen in Rumanian Girl (1918), clearly modelled on Seated Woman (1908), in which Matisse has cleared the space of all extraneous objects, and gives the stage to the model. But it was only with his Icelandic Girl in National Attire, painted a year later and placed on public display, that Jón appears to have reconciled himself with the combined influences of Matisse and Cézanne – also a major influence on him – and placed them in an Icelandic context. Those influences are also seen in Eiríksjökull (1920), applied by Jón to the Icelandic landscape. In the work of Jón Engilberts, Snorri Arinbjarnar and Þorvaldur Skúlason, who all studied under Axel Revold, the expressionist influence has been modified by time. Twenty years had passed since Jón Stefánsson and Revold were students in Paris, and much had happened in the intervening years, including the world war. Nonetheless, expressionist influence is clearly discernible in the works of these artists – though most obviously in the case of Jón Engilberts. An admirer of Edvard Munch, he had been drawn for a time to German expressionism after see- ing the work of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirschner and others at an exhibition in Oslo. On his return to Copenhagen, however, Jón was no par- ticular advocate of expressionism. But he addressed issues regarding the plight of the proletariat during the Depression of the 1930s, as did Snorri Arinbjarnar in his From the Slipway (1936). That choice of theme was in keeping with the internationalism that was a feature of both expressionism and communism. Jón Engilberts’ works in this exhibition are, however, quite different in nature, presenting Jón’s depiction of urban themes in Madame and Evening in Copenhagen, a half-naked model in Morning, and entirely Icelandic themes in Rural Scene and Evening in Kópavogur, painted after he fled Copenhagen at the start of World War II with his Danish wife, who was of Jewish descent. Jón’s art possesses a passionate expressionism which in Gunnlaugur Scheving’s case was always kept under control, although he was also a devotee of expressionism, and true to the ideal of expressionism and of the time – that choice of subject should be governed solely by personal conviction, experience and origins. Icelandic artists, admittedly, addressed the theme of Icelandic landscape in the early years of the 20th century – as if to assert the Icelanders’ ownership of their own country but they also depicted life in Icelandic fishing villages and rural communities, private life, the individual, and freedom, as manifested in the abstract expressionism of Svavar Guðnason after World War II.

Their art was a sincere quest for personal expression, while also seeking a dialogue with a nation which, like them, was in search of self-knowledge as well as true autonomy.

Curator:

Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir is a lecturer at the University of Akureyri in north Iceland and a freelance scholar, critic, curator and project manager.

After graduating from Laugarvatn High School she studied at the Sorbonne-Panthéon University in Paris, France, for her Diploma in Cultural and Communica- tion Studies. She followed this with further studies in aesthetics, completing her PhD from the Sorbonne in 2013. She worked in journalism 1987-2000, was Head of the Collections and Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland 2000-01, and was a sessional tutor at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and the University of Iceland 2002-15. She was one of the curators of the exhibition Perspectives – On the Borders of Art and Philosophy at the Reykjavik Art Museum in 2011, and in 2013 she curated Icelandic Video Art 1975- 1990 at the same venue. Margrét’s research has fo- cussed on electronic and digital art in Iceland, while she has recently turned her attention to modern Icelandic art. In 2014 she curated Points of Contact at the LÁ Art Museum in Hveragerði, in which the work of two groups of artists was juxtaposed. In the exhibition catalogue she wrote about the social context of art from a historical viewpoint, and considered the working environment of Icelandic artists. Margrét was a member of the selection committee for the exhibition Summer, now open at the Akureyri Art Museum.

Margrét was born in 1965. She grew up in Hveragerði and nearby Selfoss, and now lives in Akureyri.

Artists

Finnur Jónsson (1892-1993)

Gunnlaugur Scheving (1904-1972)

Jóhann Briem (1907-1991)

Jóhannes S. Kjarval (1895-1972)

Jón Engilberts (1908-1972)

Jón Stefánsson (1881-1962)

Guðmundur Thorsteinsson,

Muggur (1891-1924)

Snorri Arinbjarnar (1901-1958)

Svavar Guðnason (1909-1988)