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Exhibition closing of The Lyric Vision – Abstract-Expressionism in Icelandic Art, 1957-1970

Steinar Sigurðsson, Dögun, 1964.

4th of November is the last day of the exhibition Lyric Vision – Abstract-Expressionism in Icelandic Art, 1957-1970 which is at display at Reykjavik Art Museum - Kjarvalsstaðir.

As the first retrospective exhibition of Icelandic abstract expressionism, this exhibition marks a watershed in the history of exhibitions of Icelandic artists in this country. In the years following World War II art experts turned their attention and their critiques first and foremost to geometric abstract art, with its focus on bright colours and sharply defined formalism. In contrast to this, the radical changes in the late 1950s, and the rise of a more interpretive abstract expressionism, which played a large part in Icelandic painting from the time of Kristján Davíðsson‘s exhibition in 1957 until the end of the 1960s, has still not received the debate it deserves. This exhibition aims to fill that gap.