Saturday February 18th at 2 p.m., art historian Aðalsteinn Ingólfsson will take guests on a walkthrough of the exhibition Untitled, featuring abstract works, mainly gouache paintings, by Eiríkur Smith (1925-2016), which the artist made in the early 1950s when geometric abstraction was spreading across the globe, reaching Iceland as a wave of change. Works from this period in the artist’s career are, however, quite rare, as Eiríkur decided to burn many of these works in a quarry in Hafnarfjörður in 1957. The ones that have been preserved, nonetheless, demonstrate Eiríkur’s knack for the style, even if he later went in a different direction. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the works have, therefore, not been previously exhibited to the public.
Eiríkur Smith was born in Hafnarfjörður in 1925 and passed away at his home in town in 2016. Eiríkur was a student at the Painting and Drawing School of Finnur Jónsson and Jóhann Briem during the winter of 1939-1940 and at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts from 1946-1948. Thereafter, he went to Copenhagen to study drawing and he moved to Paris for further study of the arts at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére, in 1951. He had numerous solo exhibition, as well as taking part in group exhibitions all over the world throughout his career. Eiríkur’s works can be found in many museums, such as the National Gallery of Iceland, Gerðarsafn and the Reykjavík Art Museum, in addition to Hafnarborg’s vast collection of the artist’s work, counting around 400 works.
Free entry – everyone welcome.