Jóhanna Kristín Yngvadóttir (1953-1991)

Jóhanna Kristín Yngvadóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1953. In 1972-76 she studied at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, in 1976-77 at the De Stichting de Vrije Academie in Hague, and in 1977-80 at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Holland. A resurgence took place in painting in the early 1980s when the "New Wave" or "New Painting", originating from Germany and Italy, swept Europe. Like the new painters, Jóhanna Kristín reassesses expressionism and uses it as the starting-point for personal creation. In particular she seems to have looked towards the Die Brücke group that was founded in Dresden in 1905, and her sensitive and frank interpretation of her subject reveals an affinity with the works of the Norwegian painter Edward Munch (1863-1944).

In her works, Jóhanna Kristín generally did not formalize the external appearance or features of her models, using instead the stuff of daily life - people around her and no less herself - to interpret deep human truths beyond the mundane. This sensitive emotional insight and interpretation plays along the entire scale of feelings, but in the course of time, sorrow, fear and desperation are given the most space. She used internal and external reality alike as raw material to mediate deep-rooted emotions, and the conceptual world appearing on her canvases is often chilling. Yngvadottir died in March 1991, after prolonged periods of ill-health.