Paint­ings from Home

We travel around Iceland through a history that spans over a century. We stop and look at fjords, valleys, villages and farms through the eyes of people who know them better than anyone else. These are Paintings from Home, painted with love and warmth, filled with a sense of place and memories of the past. It so happens that on this trip we are unusually lucky with the weather!

This exhibition of Paintings from Home is a research project into the periphery of Icelandic art history. Educated or self-taught artists have grabbed the paintbrush and created works in a personal conversation with places and memories. The motivation behind the works is based on a sincere desire to show and tell, to deepen connections, to remember and preserve, rather than taking on trends and styles in artistic context.

The paintings tell the story of different individuals, but there are works by one hundred artists from all over the country. They also convey the story of a homogeneous society sharing a similar fate in times of social change. In the twentieth century, people moved from farms to villages, and from the countryside to the capital. This migration is intertwined with changes in the fields of education and culture, commerce and services, employment and economic development as well as social relations. The Paintings from Home remain as an attempt to slow down this progress, to stop time, to capture something before it is too late.

How do they speak to us today?