1867 -1924 · Reykjavík, Copenhagen and birth of the modern Icelandic landscape

Dark waves, light horizons and the silence of ingvellir make 'ingarinn B. 'lavorláksson a pioneer of modern painting in Iceland.

~órarinn Benedikt ~orláksson was born in 1867 in Undirfell, in the northwest of Iceland, and died in 1924. He began his professional life as a bookbinder, an artisanal profession which gave him his first independence. At a time when Iceland still had neither academy nor real artistic infrastructure, he obtained public assistance to study in Copenhagen. He attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and assimilated the Nordic naturalist tradition, outdoor work and sober construction of light. In 1900, he presented a solo exhibition in Reykjavík generally considered the first public exhibition of an Icelandic painter in his country. This event symbolically marks the birth of a national modern artistic culture. ~orlaksson chooses the Icelandic landscape as his main subject. He travels through the surroundings of Reykjavík, the countryside and especially ~ingvellir, a geological as well as historical place where ancient Alɑingi met. In Thingvellir, lava faults, bodies of water and distant mountains are ordered into calm planes. The northern light does not dissolve shapes: it reveals the structure of the soil, the great distances and the solitude of the site. The painter avoids spectacular picturesqueness. Its restrained range of greens, earths, blues and grays transforms the territory into a lasting presence. HAS the era when Iceland gradually asserted its political and cultural autonomy, these landscapes also became images of collective identity. ~orláksson teaches drawing, participates in the cultural life of Reykjavík and contributes to reflections on the national flag. With Ásgrímur Jónsson, Jóhannes Kjarval and Jón Stefansson, he belongs to the generation of pioneers of Icelandic art. Its importance is not only due to anteriority: it shows that a modern painting can be born from the patient observation of a familiar territory and that the silence of a landscape can carry a common history. The selection "' imagarinn B. 'ogláksson" notably compares Thingvellir. His reading favors drawing.

lavorlaksson does not dramatize Iceland: he lets lava, light and distance give the territory its national dignity.