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JAZZ MADNESS – TRIBUTE TO THE JAZZ MUSE. KJARVALSSTAÐIR, SUNDAY 16 AUGUST AT 4 P.M.

The exhibition Jazz Madness is Reykjavik Art Museum’s tribute to the Reykjavik Jazz Festival now celebrating its twentieth anniversary. The exhibition opens on Sunday 16 August with the performance of the Swedish jazz band Music Music Music with Michael Edlund  on drums, Fabian Kallerdahl on piano and Josef Kallerdahl playing bass.

For the two-week duration of the festival, one of the exhibition halls at Kjarvalsstaðir will be entirely dedicated to jazz, with paintings by five Icelandic painters, as well as a series of small jazz concerts, workshops and master classes. The exhibition presents tributes from Icelandic painters to their muses. Among the work are portraits of jazz legends by Tryggvi Ólafsson, Sigurður Örlygsson, and the Pop artist Erró; large, semi abstract paintings of jazz combos by Sigurbjörn Jónsson, and an Expressionistic study of a jazz pianist by Grétar Reynisson.
Many visual artists listen to jazz music while working. Jazz has been an important model for visual improvisation for the last 100 years, affecting, among other things, how painters use harmony, rhythm, tone and space in their work.  Jazz related paintings by the modernist greats Matisse, Mondrian and Leger, the Surrealist Man Ray, the Pop artist Larry Rivers, and the Neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat are well know. The exhibition ends at 31 August.

See the Reykjavik Art Museum’s programme here.