Ásmundursafn is dedicated to the works of the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893-1982) and was officially opened in 1983. The museum is housed in a single building that was once the artist’s home and studio.
Ásmundur Sveinsson’s work is always on show at the museum, since he bequeathed a vast collection of his artworks, as well as the building, to the City of Reykjavík upon his death. The museum also hosts regular exhibitions of works by other artists, which often refer to Ásmundur’s art.
Ásmundur was one of the pioneers of sculpture in Iceland and designed the building mostly himself between 1942-1959. Among other things, he built an arched building at the back of the house, which was intended as both a studio and a showroom. The architect Manfreð Vilhjálmsson designed the link that connects the main building to the arched construction. The design of the building draw its inspiration from the Mediterranean, the domes of the Middle East and the pyramids of Egypt. In the garden, you will find enlargements and casts of Ásmundur’s works, many of which he placed there himself.
The Ásmundur Sveinsson Sculpture Museum is located in Sigtún which was once a barren rise of gravelly mounds on the outskirts of Reykjavík.
The house was built in three phases in 1942, 1946 and 1955-59.The building was not designed in the traditional way but rather is the creation of sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson, albeit with assistance from architect Einar Sveinsson in completing the plans. The building was converted into an exhibition space in 1982, and architect Manfreð Vilhjálmsson was hired to create a link between the two sections of the building in 1987-91.
Ásmundarsafn was originally built as the studio and home of the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson and his family in Sigtún, just west of Laugardalur, where the City of Reykjavík allocated him a plot of land. At that time, this was a scarcely populated area which still operated a farmhouse with livestock and hay cultivation in the Laugardalur valley, but Ásmundur’s plot was "woodless and barren" as he himself put it. He had strong opinions about how buildings and settlements should be designed to interact with the local conditions of each area and, as a settler, worked hard to implement his ideas in a building on the land.
In 1942, Ásmundur built the so-called "dome", a square-shaped residential building with a hemispherical dome roof under the studio. The shape of the building is inspired by the secular architecture of the Greeks and Turks for a barren landscape that Ásmundur Sveinsson considered comparable to that of the Mediterranean. Four years later, he expanded his studio space and added a narrow wing, the "Pyramids", across the front of the house. There he derived its trapezoidal form of slanted walls and a flat roof, as well as its imposingly framed central entrance, from the large buildings of ancient Egypt. As before, Ásmundur modelled the extension in clay and later moulded it in plaster-of-Paris, and was assisted by cabinet-maker Jónas Sólmundarsson and engineer Einar Pálsson in the planning and technical support in the construction. A decade later Ásmundur built the Shed, a U-shaped workshop and gallery for work that did not tolerate standing outdoors behind the other building. His good friend, the architect Einar Sveinsson, then Master Builder to the government, provided drawings and technical assistance.
The artist himself worked on constructing the buildings—dug foundations and built moulds, mixed concrete and bent steel reinforcements, and toiled at pouring the concrete.
The yard around the buildings also served Ásmundur as a workspace for larger outdoor works. As Ásmundur had bequeathed his work to the City of Reykjavík, it was decided upon his death at the end of 1982 to prepare an exhibition space for the collection in his own buildings. A link was built between the buildings and the Shed for this purpose.
The Ásmundur Sveinsson Sculpture Museum buildings are an interesting artistic experiment in developing an Icelandic building style fit for a rugged, treeless country. The building has a sculptural appearance in its geometric force, as its smooth-polished, white-painted concrete stands out against the clear blue skies on clear days or dense snowstorms in the winter. It is also interesting to consider the evolution of the building in light of changing emphases in the artist’s own career. The first structure, the Dome, is not bound by any orientation since it is formed by an equilateral rectangle with a dome on top. The second structure, the Pyramids, does, albeit not in shape, but in its positioning along one side of the house as a facade toward the street. The exterior form or volume of the building is rendered as a mass or solid material that has been chiselled and modelled like marble in a sculptor’s hands. The window openings are small, intended more to admit light throughout the seasonal variations in daylight than to open the house up to the view. The heavy form and small window openings are reminiscent of a tussock in an open field, exposed to the wind and the weather without seeming any worse for wear, and indeed in this period Ásmundur Sveinsson was creating his massive outdoor works such as the Weather Forecaster, the Water-carrier, and the Washerwomen, as well as his major reliefs for public buildings.
By contrast, the third part of the building, the Shed, is semi-circular in shape, curling in on itself in one direction and arching its back in the other. The ceiling is slanted with north-facing windows and its support columns are in plain view like ribs in a skeleton. The Shed structure gives a much lighter impression than the earlier two buildings, and this corresponds to a new direction in Ásmundur Sveinsson’s art, then evolving from heavy, massive, and concrete statues toward lighter and more transparent three-dimensional works of wood and metal that toyed in a new and different way with the space they surrounded and enclosed. At the same time Ásmundur was also working with iron, making images, railings, and weathervanes for newly-built public schools. In a state radio interview, Ásmundur said: “Now that’s something that art has to reckon with: space. Before, when I was working in stone, it was the volume, the mass, that had the upper hand and that I had to handle, but when you’ve got a piece of iron and you’re bending it in all directions, you’re capturing the space that the material can absorb. It’s a whole new perspective.”
The indoor ambience is coloured by the dissimilar parts of the building. From the street a path leads straight through the entrance chiselled into the facade of the Pyramids and proceeds up several steps into the square building of the Dome. A narrow staircase rises into the peculiar vault under the semi-spherical roof, a remarkable place for an enterprising man to conduct his work. The space feels familiar, reminiscent of the Pantheon in Rome, Egyptian temples, and Galileo’s telescope—gold nuggets from Western culture and architectural history—albeit on a different scale. Here, everything is small and narrow, which makes the proportionality between man and the building peculiar and intimate. In the Shed and the connecting building, a white-veined marble floor has been laid to reflect the daylight coming down through the glass ceiling back onto Ásmundur’s three-dimensional works, which either stand on the floor or hang from the ceiling. The atmosphere is both reticent and flowing, as the movement of the daylight guides the movement of attention through the space.
Architects
Einar Sveinsson (1906-1973) was the first Icelandic architect to study in Germany, where his broad range of studies included urban design. He graduated from the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1932 and returned home to become one of the main apostles of functionalism in Iceland, though he soon developed his own highly idiosyncratic style. In 1934 he was hired as Master Builder for the city of Reykjavík, and divided his time between residential, public-sector, and urban design, maintaining an emphasis on an artistic approach and close collaborative working arrangements with artists such as Ásmundur Sveinsson. Einar Sveinsson left a very large body of work that includes many of Reykjavík’s best twentieth-century buildings. Major works: Private residence at Freyjugata 43 (1933). Workshop and storage buildings on Snorrabraut for the Reykjavík municipal bus service (1933). The Jón Þorgeirsson Sports Club on Lindargata (1935). Residences for the Building Cooperative Society Félagsgarður at Hávallagata 3, 7, 9, 13 (1935). Residences for the Building Cooperative Society of Printers on Hagamel 14-24 (1945-48). Design of the urban neighbourhoods Norðurmýri (1934) and Melar (1936).Development proposal for midtown Reykjavík .(1943).Primary schools: Laugarnesskóli (1934-45), Melaskóli (1944-46), Langholtsskóli (1948-52), Laugalækjarskóli (1959-64), and Breiðagerðisskóli (1956-60). Apartment buildings on Hringbraut (1942-44), Skúlagata (1944-48), Lönguhlíð (1945-49), Kleppsvegur (1956), and Sólheima (1957).Weigh-station shelter for the Port of Reykjavík, now Hamborgarabúllan Tómasar (1945). Preventative Care Clinic (Heilsuverndarstöðin, 1949-55).The Reykjavík Municipal Hospital (Borgarspítalinn, 1950-73). Swimming pools and grandstand at Laugardalur (1954-64).The Ásmundur Sveinsson Sculpture Museum, the Shed (1955-59). Hafnarbúðir (1958-62)
Manfreð Vilhjálmsson (1928-) received his architectural degree from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1954. In 1960 he established his own architectural firm, which he has occasionally operated in cooperation with others. Manfreð served as chairman of the Association of Icelandic Architects from 1965-67. He has won many awards, including the Honorary Prize of the DV Cultural Awards. In 1996 he received the highest presidential award in Iceland, the Icelandic Knightly Order of the Falcon. Major works: Gas stations for Nesti (Fossvogur and Elliðaá, 1955-57).Residences at Mávanes 4 (1964), Barðavogur 13 (1967), and Blikanes 21 (1967).The school building at Skálholt (1971).The National and University Library of Iceland (with Þorvaldur S. Þorvaldsson, 1972-94).Headquarters for the Laugardalur camping site (1985-89).The sculpture garden at the Ásmundur Sveinsson Sculpture Museum was redesigned and enlarged from 1994-2000 in accordance with the proposal of landscape architect Kolbrún Þóra Oddsdóttir.
Artist
The sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893-1982) was educated in art forms most closely related to architecture. He studied wood-carving, freestanding sculpture, and relief sculpture as architectural ornament under the auspices of Ríkharður Jónsson, among others, and at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. He divided his time between artwork and the artistic ornamentation of buildings, as well as his own building projects, modelling his own home and studio twice. Ásmundur Sveinsson was seminal to Icelandic sculpture and has been called a folk poet of visual art. He bequeathed his work as well as his Sigtún home and studio to the City of Reykjavík, which was renovated and opened as the Ásmundur Sveinsson Sculpture Museum (Ásmundarsafn). Ásmundur’s sculptures are located in many parts of the city and several of his works are also to be found in the garden of the museum.
Text by Guja Dögg Hauksdóttir, former head of the Architecture Department, Reykjavik Art Museum (2009).
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