Louisa Matthiasdottir

The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present its third exhibition of paintings by the much-admired Icelandic painter Louisa Matthiasdottir. The artist is known for her brightly-colored and strongly geometric realist paintings.

The exhibition will comprise a selection of large landscapes from the 1970s through the 1990s. The show will include a group of full-length self portraits painted in the early 1970s, as well as a series of landscapes of Maine painted while the artist was at Skowhegan. Unlike her paintings of the austere Icelandic countryside, the Maine landscapes include dense woods, verdant foliage and a lush palette.

The artist studied in Copenhagen and Paris and was a prominent younger member of Iceland’s first avant-garde. In 1942 she moved to New York where she attended Hans Hofmann’s school. Along with a group of fellow former Hofmann students, including Robert de Niro, Larry Rivers, Nell Blaine, and Jane Freilicher, she helped to foster a new sense of relevance for representational painting.

The artist’s work has been exhibited and collected widely throughout the United States and in Iceland. Her paintings are included in many private and public collections, including the Tate Gallery, London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A monograph on the artist’s work and career was published by Nesutgafan Publishing and Hudson Hills Press in 1999. A traveling retrospective was presented at the Scandinavia House in New York, and traveled to Iceland and Europe.

For further information and visuals please contact 212.262.5050.