Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval

Biography

At twenty-seven, a fisherman from Iceland passed the entrance examinations of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It was not relatives or patrons who paid for it: the money was collected by his fellow fishermen and the Icelandic Confederation of Labour.

He was born on 15 October 1885 into a poor family and was adopted. The future painter, named Jóhannes Sveinsson at birth, grew up in the countryside in the east of the country, in the district of Borgarfjörður eystri; the exact place of his birth is given differently in different accounts. He fished, and in his spare time drew and painted. He learned his first skills, as is generally believed, from Ásgrímur Jónsson, one of the first Icelandic landscape painters: he studied from his paintings.

In Copenhagen he became acquainted with Impressionism, Expressionism and Cubism and became a confident draughtsman. Later he travelled to France and Italy; according to some accounts, he also visited England. He completed the course at the academy.

The pseudonym Kjarval appeared in 1910. Literally it means “sweet whale”, though when exactly the name came to him, or from where, is not known. Under this name he entered the history of Icelandic art.

Kjarval worked a great deal. His thousands of sheets and canvases differ widely in manner, and styles are often mixed in them. He painted Icelandic landscapes and lava formations, but looked at them in an unusual way: in many pictures the eye comes up against the nearest layer of ground, while the mountains in the background are pushed back, and this makes the landscape partly “Cubist”, almost abstract. Into the lava and moss he wove elves, heroes of the sagas and trolls. One cannot call this Surrealism, but there are absurd and Symbolist traits in such works. It seems to me that the mythological figures are not a separate genre for him but a way of reading the rock itself: a figure appears where the pattern of the stone allows it. Toward old age abstract painting appeared in his work more and more often. He also wrote poetry, which is why “poet” stands beside “painter” in lists of his occupations.

In 1950 Kjarval built a summer house in the east of Iceland and named it Kjarvalshvammur. In 1958 the King of Sweden awarded him the Prince Eugen Medal.

He died on 13 April 1972 in Reykjavík and was buried in a cemetery in that city. Kjarvalsstaðir, one of the three buildings of the Reykjavík Art Museum, is named after him, and shows his works alongside temporary exhibitions. His portrait appears on the Icelandic 2,000-króna banknote. His son, Sveinn Kjarval, became an interior designer.