Sigurjón Ólafsson (1908−1982) was born in Eyrarbakki,
a village at the south coast of Iceland. Trained as a house painter, he
entered the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1928, from which
he graduated in 1935, having supplemented his studies with a year in Rome.
In 1930, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Academy for his sculpture
Labourer.
Sigurjón Ólafsson's largest sculpture project in the
thirties was his 3 by 4 metre relief
Stacking Salt Fish
1934−35. This relief, a tribute to the Icelandic working class, exhibits
some of the features of the purist art that was then in vogue, most
notably in its rounded and massive planes.
From early on Sigurjón Ólafsson worked in abstract forms, but he also
developed the realistic style that characterizes his portrait busts
and statues. He has been named one of his century's most important
portrait sculptors. In 1938 he was awarded the honorable Danish
Eckersberg Prize for the portrait
My Mother,
cast of which were immediately bought by leading museums
in Scandinavia. In 1939, he made his first completely abstract sculpture
Man and Woman,
which caused great controversy, but is now considered a sculptural
landmark in Denmark where Sigurjón is known as a pioneer of
spontaneous abstract sculpture. Sigurjón's most challenging
commission was the Vejle sculpture group
(LSÓ 1062,
LSÓ 1063).
The commission called for two large cubes to be placed at the centre
of the main square of the town of Vejle, flanking a staircase in
front of the city hall. Each cube, almost 2 metres high would feature
symbolic figures for the town's main occupations, agriculture,
handicraft, trade and industry.
Sigurjón Ólafsson returned to Iceland in 1945. As one of the leading
artists of the country, he was commissioned to create numerous
challenging projects, among them a 90 m long
relief at the Búrfell
hydropower station. He leaves eighteen public monuments in
Reykjavík alone,
Emblem of Iceland
at Hagatorg and
Throne Pillars
by the Höfði House perhaps being the best known.
Sigurjón Ólafsson was an experimental artist who brought both classical schooling
and artistic insight to a variety of materials from clay and plaster to wood,
metal, stone and concrete. This versatility has inspired younger
generations of Icelandic visual artists. His works are found at
museums and private collections in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy
and the United States.
The Sigurjón Ólafsson Museum, situated in the
artist's former studio at Laugarnes in Reykjavík, is
dedicated to research of the artist's life and art and houses an
extensive collection of his works. A
catalogue raisonné of Ólafsson's work is accesible
here.
