Louisa matthiasdottir biography

Louisa Matthíasdóttir was an Icelandic-American painter.
Louisa Matthíasdóttir (February 20, 1917 – February 26, 2000) was an Icelandic-American painter.
Louisa Matthíasdóttir was born in 1917 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

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Louisa Matthíasdóttir was born Reykjavík, Iceland in February 1917. She studied in Copenhagen, Paris and after she moved New York in 1942, with Hans Hoffman alongside Robert De Niro Sr., Larry Rivers, Nell Blaine and Jane Freilicher. Matthíasdóttir’s first solo exhibition was in 1948 at the Jane Street Gallery.

By the 1960s Matthíasdóttir developed the aesthetic that would be hers for the remainder of her long creative life, until her death in February 2000. Matthíasdóttir painted figures, animals, buildings and landscapes of Iceland and Maine with a directness and clarity achieved through bold bands of color and broad brushwork. These simplified elemental shapes reflect the scale, breath, grandeur and sparseness of her visual heritage.

Her works are in the collections of the Reykjavík Municipal Art Museum, Kjarvalstaðir, Iceland, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C

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Louisa Matthíasdóttir

Hestar - Paintings in Iceland

Opens Saturday, January 29, 2022

January 29 to March 10, 2022

Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present Louisa Matthíasdóttir's Hestar, an exhibition of paintings of landscapes and horses from the 1980s. This is the artist's sixth show at the gallery.

Louisa Matthíasdóttir’s colorful, unassuming and minimal landscape paintings, have the striking quality of appearing constructed. She said of her process, “The reason I paint is because I want to paint what I see. But to paint what I see, I must build from color.” From the 1970's and into the 1990's, Matthiasdottir regularly painted the Icelandic landscape. Painted in broad flat planes of intense color, she painted tilting green meadows with distant treeless mountains under stark skies. Often they are punctuated by dark horses or dogs, blocky buildings and clusters of sheep. They are always elegantly composed.

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Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing paintings or works on paper by Louisa Matthiasdottir.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com

Louisa Matthíasdóttir (February 20, 1917 – February 26, 2000) was an Icelandic-American painter.

Louisa was born in Reykjavík. She showed artistic ability at an early age, and studied first in Denmark and then under Marcel Gromaire in Paris. Her early paintings, dating from the late 1930s, established her as a leading figure in the Icelandic avant-garde community (many of whom met together in a house in Reykjavík called Unuhús). In these paintings, subjects are painted with a broad brush, emphasizing geometric form. These paintings already show much of the character of Louisa's mature work, but are more subdued in color.

Her move to New York City in 1942 was followed by a period of study under Hans Hofmann, along with other painters including Robert De Niro, Sr. (father of the actor) and Jane Freilicher. In 1944 she married painter Leland Bell, and until Bell