The 140th anniversary of the founding of the National Gallery of Iceland is marked by a new exhibition: Looking Inward, Looking Outward: 140 Years of the National Gallery of Iceland. The exhibition highlights important acquisitions from the collection by nearly 100 artists, including significant gifts to the museum and important purchase.
The exhibition is organized around four main themes: Society and Community; Picturing the Self and Others; Form, Line and Colour; and Humans and Nature. Certain works of art look outwards – at the country, the artist’s immediate surroundings, society, or the world as a whole – and tend to provide a vision that gives rise to self-realisation for individuals and society. Other works of art look inward, exploring the self, history or cultural heritage, also open an outward view – a broader perspective on the world.
Close to 200 works by nearly 100 artists are displayed, including painting, sculpture, photography, video, installations and book art. The collection history span the period from the founding of the museum in 1884 – when the collection comprised mainly works by Danish artists – to the era of the pioneers of Icelandic art, Þórarinn B. Þorláksson and Jóhannes S. Kjarval, to the postwar period represented by Nína Tryggvadóttir and Louisa Matthíasdóttir, and to the era of avant-garde artists such as Magnús Tómasson and Sigurður Guðmundsson. New works will also be shown, including Melanie Ubaldo’s But You’re Too Tanned Though for an Icelander, a work that points to how artists are continuously addressing new subjects and developments in society. The works on display provide insight into the history of Icelandic art, from its beginnings until the present day, while an international dimension is also present in works by world-renowned artists such as Edward Munch, Pablo Picasso, Dieter Roth and Roni Horn.
