Halldór Einarsson
Dialogue across generations
August 17 – October 21, 2018
Ásdís Ólafsdóttir
Marvellous nature, mysticism and democracy
This year, 2018, as we celebrate the centenary of Icelandic national sovereignty, we have the opportunity to pause, look back over our cultural heritage, and view it in the context of the present day. In 1918 Halldór Einarsson was an apprentice woodcarver in Reykjavík. Four years later he emigrated to the New World; he never returned to Iceland until 1965, when he came back for good. At about that time, four artists were young children, or were being born. The objective of this exhibition is to explore Halldór‘s career and works, which form part of his gift to the county of Árnessýsla. By placing his work in the context of contemporary artists Guðjón Ketilsson, Rósa Sigrún Jónsdóttir, Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson and Anna Hallin, we hope that visitors – and readers of this catalogue – will see it in a new light. Unexpected connections form in various directions: from furniture to books, from handcraft to nature, medicine to politics, power to women. Halldór‘s works are thought-provoking, and have something to say – sometimes indirectly – to us in the present day.
I
The Halldór Einarsson Collection
From south Iceland to the New World
When the Halldór Einarsson Collection was opened in Selfoss, south Iceland, on 14 June 1974, he dedicated it to the memory of his parents, Einar Einarsson and Þórunn Halldórsdóttir of Brandshús. This reserved craftsman, who had emigrated to north America and lived there for many years, thus closed the circle that bound him so powerfully to his home territory in south Iceland.
Halldór was one of seven children of the family on the farm of Brandshús in the community of Gaulverjabær. From an early age he displayed an interest in woodcarving, and he applied to be apprenticed to Stefán Eiríksson (1862-1924), who was Iceland’s first professionally trained woodcarver, and a pioneer in art education.¹ But there was so much demand for the very few available apprenticeships that Halldór had to wait five years, until 1916, to be apprenticed. He spent the next four years in Reykjavík, and graduated as journeyman in woodcarving and drawing in 1920.² He went on to work for several carpenters, and his work included carving banisters in the Egill Jacobsen store in Reykjavík. Halldór’s eldest brother, Gestur, had emigrated to Manitoba in Canada, where he was a farmer. He urged Halldór to join him, offering to pay his fare, and in the autumn of 1922 Halldór emigrated. After staying initially with his brother, he moved to Winnipeg, where he did a variety of jobs before finding work “in his trade” in the summer of 1924.³
Once he had paid off his debt to his brother, Halldór decided to try his luck in the United States, and moved to Chicago. He had difficulty finding work at first, but in time he was employed as a woodcarver by various furniture-makers in the city. Icelandic-American entrepreneur Chester Hjörtur Thordarson (1867-1945), who had emigrated as a child with his parents, was to be a crucial influence on Halldór’s life. An electrical engineer and inventor, Thordarson was the founder of a flourishing factory in Chicago producing electrical transformers. In 1928 he commissioned Halldór to carve wooden furniture for a large library at the factory.⁴ Thordarson himself designed the furniture, which was built by carpenter Sveinbjörn Árnason⁵ and carved by Halldór to designs he made in consultation with Thordarson. The themes were mainly drawn from Old Norse mythology and the old Icelandic way of life, and ornamented with interlace, foliage motifs and runic letters. Halldór spent more than two years carving two large chairs, 24 smaller ones, two long library tables, a magnificent desk for Thordarson, and other pieces. Thordarson purchased a large part of Rock Island in Lake Michigan, where he had a number of buildings constructed. Halldór stayed on the island, where he carved chessmen and inscriptions for Thordarson’s “Viking Hall.” The library, with Halldór’s carved furniture, was also moved out to the island.⁶ Halldór spent the winter on Rock Island, where he cut down trees and was caretaker of a large greenhouse. The Great Depression was at its height, with a disastrous impact on the furniture industry, so work was hard to find, and no doubt Halldór was glad to be employed on Rock Island. But the Depression also affected Thordarson’s business, and in the end he lost almost all he had. In the early 1930s Halldór gave serious thought to returning to Iceland, according to letters written by one of his brothers.⁷ But when he found secure employment as a woodcarver at a furniture factory he decided to stay on in Chicago. Halldór is reputed to have had indirect links with the Mafia at that time, carving a gun butt for Al Capone.⁸
In late 1941 Halldór married Josefine Jablonski, who was of Polish origin.[9] During World War II Halldór continued to work as a woodcarver at the same furniture factory, and the couple remained in Chicago until Josefine died in the early 1950s, when Halldór moved out of the city to live in a cabin he had built on land he had bought about 40 km from Chicago.
The recluse and nature
In an interview he gave in his old age, Halldór looked wistfully back on his years in the woods: “I never thought of going back to Iceland. I just lived as a recluse out in the woods, in a cabin on that little plot. I lived there for twenty whole years, all alone with marvellous nature.”¹⁰ During his time on Rock Island Halldór had developed an interest in botany, and his employer had encouraged him to read about it in his library. Out in the woods he went a step further, extending his interests from flora to fauna. “There I got to know far more appealing forms of life than humans: flowers and trees, birds and small simple life forms. I could speak to those animals – and the birds too – and they understood me.” Halldór continued to work in Chicago, but at slack times he stayed home and made carvings. “I could have my workbench outside the cabin. There’s nothing better.”
Halldór’s interest in animals found an outlet in some of his carvings: two versions of Musk Oxen (one Icelandic, one Greenlandic), bison in Defense, Great Auk, Penguin, Tryggur the dog, Horse Fight… These animal-themed works are mostly woodcarvings or weighty stone sculptures, like Ýmir and Auðhumla, a motif drawn from Norse mythology, where a Giant and a huge cow coalesce into one.¹¹
Egg of Life is a large ovoid form carved in wood. The title evokes Icelandic folklore traditions of a fjöregg or “egg of life” which held the life-force of certain mythical beings, that could be destroyed by smashing the egg. The surface is marked out in panels showing different forms of life on earth. At the bottom are plants, then trees, butterflies, and finally humanity in all its variety: a Native American, a black person, an Asian, an Inuit, and the white man, as represented by playwright George Bernard Shaw. Other remarkable men are also depicted, including a well-known Icelandic equestrian, Höskuldur of Hrafnsstaðir. At the top of the egg are birds. Halldór spent a long time on the piece, and said he had devoted more effort to it than any other work he had made.¹² It is illustrative of Halldór’s philosophy, his cosmic consciousness, and profound respect for life in all its forms.
It was during his years in the woods that Halldór start to carve busts and human figures. In 1961 a Chicago milkman named Boris commissioned Halldór to carve his portrait. He made a full-length hardwood figure, for which he demanded such a high price that the client refused to pay, and Halldór kept the work. He said that this event had led to his starting to keep the woodcarvings he made, and building up his collection, which he ultimately brought back to Iceland.¹³
Visions of Iceland
Throughout his years in the New World, Halldór corresponded with his family and friends in Iceland, who kept him informed about the weather, farming, fishing and the health, marriages, births and deaths of relatives and neighbours. Halldór had an affectionate relationship with his mother, who always addressed him in her letters as “beloved,” and “my dear good boy.” He sent money and gifts home to Iceland, but he never went back to his home country until 1965, after 43 years abroad, when he came home to stay. He was keenly interested in Old Norse mythology and the Icelandic sagas, as was clearly manifested in his woodcarvings made for Chester Hjörtur Thordarson around 1930. Many of Halldór’s later sculptures were inspired by Icelandic characters: for instance his Icelandic Woman and a rather large sculpture of a seated farmer.
In the later 1950s Halldór undertook an ambitious project, Members of Parliament in the Year of the Republic, 1944. For this he made carvings of all 52 members of the Icelandic parliament, based on photographs in a book published to mark the foundation of the modern republic after centuries of foreign rule: Lýðveldishátíðin 1944.¹⁴ The project, which took several years, was largely completed by 1962. The figures of the parliamentarians are unusual, carved in wood with disproportionately large heads. They are shown seated, with their hands on their knees or in the laps. Some are on a low pedestal. Halldór, who had a talent for versification, composed a verse for each parliamentarian, which is carved either on the pedestal or on the back. Halldór had also made carvings of renowned Icelanders such as 17th-century Bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson and Sigurður Guðmundsson the Painter, an influential cultural figure in the 19th century. After his return to Iceland in 1965 he made carvings of other distinguished men, such as Matthías Þórðarson, director of the National Museum, and judge Jón Pétursson.
Panels on the History of Iceland are among Halldór’s earlier works. These comprise twelve bas-reliefs which were conceived as forming a pedestal for a wooden sculpture of the Lady of the Mountains, a female figure symbolically representing Iceland.¹⁵ Using as his source a Summary of the History of Iceland by Þorkell Bjarnason, published in 1880, Halldór divided the history of the country into twelve periods: Early Era – papar (i.e. Irish monks who are reputed to have lived in Iceland before the Norse settlement), the Age of Settlement, theSaga Age or Golden Age, Age of Peace, Age of Writing, the Sturlung Age, Age of Ecclesiastical Power, the Age of Reformation, the Age of Monopoly Trading, the Age of Resurgence, the Age of Independence, and finally Fate or The Future – i.e. the time ahead. The bas-reliefs, which are of fine workmanship, express this Icelandic-American’s interpretation of the history of his home country. The style, especially in the case of the forward-facing images, displays aspects of the symbolism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Halldór made a number of other reliefs, some of which seek inspiration in Old Norse mythology, such as Hænir God of Clouds, Óðinn God of Winds, Loki God of Fire and In Hveralundur, Loki and Sigyn.
The titles of the works are sometimes incised on them, either in English or Icelandic. Halldór was known in his family by the diminutive Dóri, which in the USA became Dory, and he signed most of his work with that name, even after he returned to Iceland in his old age.
Spiritual Hero
Halldór grew up in an observant Christian home, and when he emigrated to the New World he still had his simple Lutheran faith. In 1923-26 he and his brother Gestur argued over religious matters in their letters; Gestur was a freethinker, and sceptical of Christianity. Halldór’s marriage to Josefine in 1941 took place in a Catholic church, no doubt due to the bride’s religious affiliation. But after Josefine’s death in 1954, when Halldór took up a reclusive life in the woods, he abandoned Christianity altogether, and became an even more ardent freethinker than his brother.¹⁶
In the early 1960s Halldór made a number of bas-reliefs on spiritual and moral subjects. These were made in series, each having the same outlines and theme. One such series was Hope, Faith and Charity, another Past, Present and Future. Others included Truth and Justice, Extremism and Hypocrisy, Orthodoxy and Knowledge, and Earth and Life Force. Spiritual Hero (1962) depicts a small figure with an oversized head, from which oval forms radiate like auras or other dimensions. The reliefs are made with great care, while at the same time expressing a clear and simple message about right and wrong, and the principles of life.
In his old age Halldór displayed elements of theosophy, mysticism and symbolism in his art. Theosophy had a considerable following in the USA, and a major theosophical centre was located in Chicago. It seems likely that Halldór had some connection with theosophists there.¹⁷ He also admired the work of sculptor Einar Jónsson (1874-1954); in 1920-21 sculptures by Einar were erected in Philadelphia and in Winnipeg. Symbolism is a prominent aspect of Einar Jónsson’s work, which reflects a profound spiritual cosmic sensibility.
In Halldór’s The Elements, a sphinx-like winged being is seated on a sphere. On her sides are the yin/yang symbols, an Egyptian ankh signifying life, and two triangles: one tapering upwards, with a flame, symbolising the male, the other tapering downwards, with water, for the female. At his home in the woods Halldór erected a six-metre-high wooden sculpture carved with similar symbols. When Halldór’s collection was put on display in Selfoss in 1974, the white floor was marked out with a spiral design comprising Chinese, Egyptian and Norse symbols, by Halldór himself. As mentioned above, Halldór dedicated the collection to his parents, and the symbols were intended to reflect their lives. And there is something beautiful about a farmer’s son from south Iceland ending his life with a loving tribute to his parents evoking international and cosmic mysticism.
A range of media
Halldór is best known for his woodcarving, the trade in which he was trained and at which he worked for most of his life. He carved mostly in oak – a function of its availability in the American Midwest where Halldór lived. He said himself that he had used “all sorts of trash that came to hand” and found materials in the woods where he lived.¹⁸ In a few pieces he used cherrywood, having gone to some trouble to acquire it. He sometimes made use of branches, for instance in Tree of Life (1963) or Stoat, made from a branch of an Icelandic tree, which had been brought to him in the Hrafnista old people’s home.
Halldór also sculpted in stone and marble, mainly after he emigrated to the USA. One of the oldest such pieces is Spring, a marble which depicts the tension in a being that wants to fly, yet is still partly caught in ice. Halldór, who tended to be critical of his own work, said of Spring that it was “one of the few works that is something.”¹⁹ He made marble bas-reliefs such as Humans, Old Age, and busts of his parents, as well as birds and other creatures in other types of stone.
Halldór made many small pieces in wood, stone and horn, most notably chessmen carved in deer antler. The knights, bishops and rooks were all given their own names and attributes. Some of the small works are simply a stone on a small pedestal, while in other cases the figure is determined by the form of the material. Halldór appears to have worked unceasingly – whether on series of complex mystical images, humorous pieces or simple, near-abstract forms. And he certainly had a good feel for his material.
Philosophy
Halldór Einarsson left the USA for Iceland in 1965, and lived at the Hrafnista old people’s home for the rest of his life. He had a workspace at the home, where he made additions to his collection. Shortly after his return he held a small exhibition in the basement of his nephew’s home in Kópavogur.²⁰ Asked about his art, Halldór remarked that it was more of a hobby and a pastime. A bad experience with an art exhibition in Chicago led to his deciding as a young man that “I shall never set out to win honour and fame as an artist. I’m going to carry on carving roses and hooks as a craftsman.”²¹ Yet, paradoxically, he kept the works of art he made, and ultimately presented them to the county of Árnessýsla, together with a financial donation. The extension built on the exhibition premises at Selfoss, and his own installation of the display of his works, mark the end of the career of this unusual man, who for all his modesty was a true artist. The display of his work enabled him to look back and imbue his works with meaning, giving them a place in his philosophy, which was characterised by strong bonds with his homeland as well as an open-minded approach to symbolism and the philosophies of different cultures.
II
In a contemporary light
The idea of the body
Guðjón Ketilsson is one of the contemporary Icelandic artists who makes most use of wood in his works. The wood is cut, carved, smoothed and painted with skill and care. While his art is conceptual, he presents it through one of humanity’s oldest creative media.
Guðjón’s Tools appear at first glance to be old craftsmen’s tools of wood and metal. They have the aura of rather old-fashioned gadgets that sit well in the hand and have gained a fine patina from decades of use. On closer scrutiny, however, they are seen to be unusable tools with no practical application. Guðjón’s beautiful but non-functional Tools represent the idea of gadgets, a memory of the craft traditions of olden times, a symbol of our relationship with the world around us and the age-old need to shape it.²²
The installation Hair comprises objects carved in wood and painted white. Guðjón has long been working with our relationship with the human body, and has selected certain related themes, such as Christ’s loincloth in the installation Fragment, and his shoe works. The Tools are also in a sense extensions of the human hand. While the spherical elements of the installation Hair reference the locks on certain well-known heads, at the same time they are enigmatic, and some are even reminiscent of shells and other organic forms. The painted surfaces mean that the material is disguised, and the wood can be misleading.
Guðjón has made works from old wooden furniture, which he first showed in the exhibition Roles in 2009. Untitled is made from a cabinet from the 1930s or 40s. The artist has cut openings in the doors and panels, revealing white books that form two half-pyramids. The formal beauty of the piece references furniture that belonged to Guðjón’s parents in another era – in Halldór Einarsson’s time. And a connection is established with Halldór’s career: as Halldór added carved ornament to furniture, Guðjón has added books and his interpretation of the cabinet as a sculpture. The books evoke the literary heritage, the Icelandic love of reading, the treasured volumes which were so carefully stored – and sometimes forgotten – in sturdy cupboards and cabinets.
Healing craft
Rósa Sigrún Jónsdóttir’s works lie at the indeterminate boundary of craft and art. She has worked extensively with textile, and has moved ever closer to delicate craftsmanship in her crochet, knitting, embroidery and drawings. Her forms and colours draw mainly on Icelandic nature – where she has her other career as a mountain guide. For her there is a close relationship between work with threads and the natural growth of organisms: both grow gradually, develop and take on their final form.
Rósa Sigrún’s Grasses are modelled on more than twenty Icelandic medicinal plants which are to be found all over the country. The artist crochets each plant in white yarn, then paints them with acrylics. The work was made in collaboration with a group of needlewomen who shared their knowledge and experience of plants as the work progressed. In 2017 Rósa Sigrún made a two-dimensional version of Grasses: the plants are embroidered on a thin, soluble fabric, then sprayed with water so the fabric vanishes, leaving only the embroidered plant.
Drawing is also a time-consuming art form which demands accuracy and patience. Over the past two years the artist has made drawings of medicinal plants, into which she delicately embroiders. A part of the black-and-white images is thus coloured with embroidery thread. The drawings are reminiscent of illustrations in a botanical encyclopaedia. There is something old and classical about them, yet at the same time they relate in a natural way to Grasses. “Utilisation of nature, human intervention, metamorphosis, the cyclical and recycling are key concepts in my work,” says the artist.²³ She sees the healing power of craft as going hand in hand with the curative power of nature.
The connection between Rósa Sigrún Jónsdóttir and Halldór Einarsson is a function of their shared love for both craft and nature.
Images of democracy
Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson embarked on a project resembling Halldór Einarsson‘s 52 Members of Parliament, with the difference that Birgir worked in his own medium – painting. In 2015-16 he painted portraits of the 63 members of the Alþingi (parliament) who took their seats in 2013, plus one more. The work, Hope, depicts the representatives of the people as fair-haired and blue-eyed, partially erasing their individual features. Birgir Snæbjörn is known for series such as Blonde Miss World and Blond Professions. He takes the image of blondness as a reference to Icelandic society, where everybody is of the same type and “the world is viewed through blue eyes.”²⁴ He paints in very pale tones of oil paint on raw canvas. In Hope he paints only the face and hair of the subject, while the neckline is drawn in pencil.
In Halldór Einarsson‘s Members of Parliament too, the focus is on the heads, which are disproportionately large for the bodies. They are also generally similar to each other; Halldór based his carvings on photographs in a book which had been published twenty years earlier. His figures were thus not in dialogue with his time, but a monument to a specific, historic moment in the evolution of Icelandic democracy. Birgir, on the other hand, consciously aims to establish a live dialogue with his time: Hope was first shown in the autumn of 2016, a few weeks before a parliamentary election. He went on to paint the series Justice, depicting ten (blond) Supreme Court judges. As for Halldór, he carved a portrait of Judge Jón Pétursson. Interestingly enough, Halldór had also carved bas-reliefs with the titles The Hope and The Justice.
It is enlightening to juxtapose Halldór’s Members of Parliament, from the early 1960s, with Birgir Snæbjörn’s Hope, half a century on. Both artists address the image of democracy, rather than individuals. Both are comfortable with the series form, and do not hesitate to spend years, and untold hours of work, to complete their pieces. Both are clearly somewhat obsessive. Yet Halldór’s profound sense of materiality and his massy wooden works are in sharp contrast to Birgir’s pale, almost intangible paintings. Here we see manifestations of two very different worlds, societies, and attitudes to the highest authority in the land – which in Halldór’s case evoked respect and hope, and in Birgir’s growing distrust and scepticism. “Hope is what we all believe we have, yet it is also what is easily lost,” remarks Birgir Snæbjörn.²⁵ And that is true of both works of art.
Powerful women and clusters
Anna Hallin opted to make three new busts as a response to Halldór Einarsson‘s Members of Parliament. Powerful Women is her homage to three pioneers in Icelandic politics and national life: former president of Iceland Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and the present prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir. The figures, of reconstituted marble, are reminiscent in character and proportions of Halldór’s woodcarvings. Anna’s Powerful Women exemplify the progress and development that has taken place from the (all-male) first parliament of the new Republic of Iceland in 1944, to these women who have held the highest offices in the country. Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson’s Hope depicts 27 women members of parliament, and 37 men; a sign of progress, certainly, but still not equality. Women in the most powerful offices are still a rarity, and in her work Anna draws attention to the individuals who have scaled those heights – as well as to women in general in global politics and power.
Anna selected Cluster (2016) in response to Halldór Einarsson‘s
Peak of Honour or Race to the Top, which dates from his time in America. It depicts the battle of life as a spiral form, leading to a dictator at the peak. Anna Hallin’s Cluster addresses people’s situation in a society where some stand on each other’s shoulders. She also seeks to depict the human tendency to form groups or clusters, each with their own internal balance and principles. Anna’s Bureaucrats (2012) is a group of individuals who, despite some personal features, are homogeneous in appearance and attitude – belonging to a collective psyche or communal ritual.
Anna is known for porcelain figures, often in groups, although they may also stand alone. One of the latest of these is Selfie, a rather vulnerable figure standing on a dais with a digital drawing made by cursors for animation. In the age of social media and narcissism, the individual often perceives him/herself as “other.” “The figure, with its stuff, is trying to maintain its dignity and balance on the brink of this consciousness of the self,” says the artist about her piece.²⁶ Anna also draws excellently, as witness her preparatory drawing for Powerful Women. In Faces, pen-and-ink drawings she shows here for the first time, we see faces which have arisen from her acquaintanceship with people over the years. The faces, especially the eyes, are rather indistinct, like forgotten photographs or impressions from the depths of memory.
Anna Hallin is is Swedish by birth, but has lived in Iceland for many years. Without reaching for a precise parallel with Halldór Einarsson’s career, spent largely abroad, it is safe to say that the foreigner’s perspective is often interesting and rewarding for the “host” country. When Halldór Einarsson was living “all alone with marvellous nature” outside Chicago, his companions were the animals in the woods. “I spoke to them in three languages – their language, English and Icelandic, and they understood it all.”²⁷ Halldór was an intuitive artist; and just as he spoke to the animals in their own language, his works speak to us today. That dialogue with the present, which is sometimes unexpected or strange, is often rewarding, touching a nerve that lies deep in the (national) psyche.
Curator
Ásdís Ólafsdóttir
Ásdís Ólafsdóttir was born in 1961. She is an art historian, living in Paris. She completed her PhD from the Panthéon-Sorbonne university in Paris in 1995. She has written and lectured on design, architecture and modern art in Iceland and abroad, and has curated many exhibitions. This is her third collaboration with the LÁ Art Museum: she curated the exhibitions Women of the Spirit. Gerður Helgadóttir, Nína Tryggvadóttir. Paris–Skálholt in 2009 and Horizonic: Unfolding Space through Sound Art in 2012. Ásdís is director of the Maison Louis Carré outside Paris, designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, and is a founder and editor of the periodical ARTnord.
Artists
Anna Hallin was born in Sweden in 1965 and has lived in Reykjavík since 2001. Anna holds a master’s degree in ceramics from the University of Gothenburg and in visual arts from Mills College, Oakland, California. She has participated in many group exhibitions in Iceland and abroad and held solo exhibitions in Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Germany, to name a few. Her works are in the collections of, among others, the Reykjavik Art Museum, Kópavogur Art Museum, Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum, Reykjanes Art Museum and the National Gallery of Iceland. For a number of years Anna has been cooperating with artist Olga Bergmann on art projects. Their collaboration has mostly focussed on visual art in public spaces: an example is their prizewinning proposal for a work of art in the new prison at Hólmsheiði.
Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson was born in 1966. He graduated from the department of visual art at Akureyri High School, and then attended the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts (precursor of the Iceland University of the Arts) 1986-89. In 1991-93 he studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, France, in the multimedia department. For some time he also lived and worked on his art in London, but now lives and works in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 2007 he and his wife Sigrún Sigvaldadóttir co-founded Gallery Skilti, an art gallery located at their home in Dugguvogur 3, Reykjavik. His art has been exhibited both in Iceland and abroad. His art has both social and political overtones.
Guðjón Ketilsson was born in 1956. He graduated from the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts (precursor of the Iceland University of the Arts) in 1978 and continued his art studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada, from which he graduated in 1980. Guðjón mostly works in drawing and sculpture. In his work he focusses on the human body, its presence or absence. Guðjón has held over thirty solo shows and participated in a number of exhibitions in Iceland and Europe, the United States, China and Australia. Guðjón’s works are found in a number of private and public art collections in Iceland, as well as several overseas. In addition to being invited to work on his art at a number of international art studios, he has been selected to participate in competitions for art in public spaces, and his works can be seen in such spaces in Reykjavík and in Seyðisfjörður, east Iceland.
Rósa Sigrún Jónsdóttir was born in 1962. She graduated from the Iceland University of Education in 1987 and from the Iceland University of the Arts in 2001. Rósa has held many private exhibitions and participated in numerous exhibitions both at home and abroad. She was the chair of the Reykjavík Sculpture Association for four years, and was also an artists’ representative at the State foundation for art in public spaces. She has been invited to art residencies around the world, her works are found in public spaces in Iceland and Finland, and she has received national and international recognition, recently the Premio Ora art prize. Since 2007 she has been teaching at the Reykjavik School of Visual Arts. Rósa Sigrún works mainly with textile, ranging from large three-dimensional installations to small two-dimensional works. She also works as a mountain guide and relates to Icelandic nature in various ways in her work.
Halldór Einarsson from Brandshús in south Iceland was born in 1893 and died in Reykjavík in 1977. He trained in wood-carving and drawing with wood-carver Stefán Eiríksson of Reykjavík, then emigrated in 1922 to the New World, where he worked for most of his life as a woodcarver in a furniture factory in Chicago. In the USA he also learned to work in marble and stone, and he always spent his leisure hours carving and sculpting. In 1969 Halldór Einarsson announced his intention to give to his home county, Árnessýsla, his collection of woodcarvings, sculptures and drawings, together with a gift of 10,000 US dollars. As a result of this gift, an art museum was constructed in Selfoss, where the two inaugural gifts were displayed in two galleries: the art collection of Bjarnveig Bjarnadóttir, donated in 1963-89, and the Halldór Einarsson collection. The building, opened in 1974, housed Listasafn Árnesinga, the LÁ Art Museum, until 2001, when the museum moved to Hveragerði. Halldór Einarsson thus paved the way for the foundation of the LÁ Art Museum.