Karl Kvaran (1924-1989)

Karl Kvaran was born in Borðeyri in western Iceland. He studied at the Icelandic School of Art and Crafts in Reykjavík in 1943-45, at the Kunstakademi, Copenhagen, and at the private school of Peter Rostrup Bøyesen (1882-1952). The influence during 1942-52 of French art can be seen in the strongly composed, post-Cubist paintings, in which regular and abrupt brushstrokes create a sculptural, hammered surface texture. Around 1951 Kvaran turned from figurative art to geometrical abstraction, and he remained committed to two-dimensional geometric art employing pure and uniform colour forms without reference to depth.

From 1958 to 1970 Kvaran produced mainly large gouache pictures and ink drawings. The structure became soft, and the straight lines were replaced by a rhythmic linear interplay. After 1970 Kvaran´s oils increased significantly in size, and the motionless formal shapes were replaced by movement. Lucid and intensive constructions of colour, variations of red, yellow and blue, appear everywhere, together with blacks and whites. This development reached its climax around 1979 with large, clean, colourful works, expansive and rhythmic at the same time. Kvaran died in Reykjavík in 1989.