Jón Engilberts (1908-1972)

Jón Engilberts was born in Reykjavík in 1908. He attended Gudmundur Thorsteinsson's (Muggur) private art school in Reykjavík 1921-22 and the Cooperative College 1925-26. Studied drawing at Copenhagen Technical College 1927. Studied at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in Copenhagen 1928-31 and the State Academy of Art in Oslo 1931-33 under Axel Revold. Resident in Reykjavík 1933-34, then in Copenhagen 1934-40, when he moved back to Iceland for good. From 1934-40 he played an active part on the Danish art scene and was elected a member of both Kammeraterne exhibition Group (1936) and the Danish Graphic Artists' Society.

Engilberts was one of the second generation of modern Icelandic artists who turned their attention from landscape to the new realist subject of the fishing villages and their people. His early paintings and prints are much influenced by German Expressionism. After his return to Iceland in 1940, Engilberts became an important figure on the Icelandic art scene, as a teacher, printmaker, campaigner for artists´rights and an illustrator. Engilberts produced a number of important woodcuts and linocuts. In 1965 he began to paint large-scale, thickly impastoed Abstract Expressionist works, combining private fantasies with references to Icelandic nature and mythology. Engilberts died in Reykjavík in 1972.