Louisa Matthíasdóttir

Louisa Matthíasdóttir (February 20, 1917 – February 26, 2000) was an Icelandic-American painter.

Louisa was born in Reykjavík. From 1925 to 1937 she grew taking place in the well-known Höfði home since her relatives resided there. She showed artistic feat at an forward age, and studied first in Denmark and then under Marcel Gromaire in Paris. Her at the forefront paintings, dating from the late 1930s, established her as a leading figure in the Icelandic unprejudiced community (many of whom met together in a house in Reykjavík called Unuhús). In these paintings, subjects are painted in imitation of a expansive brush, emphasizing geometric form. According to Louisa, "it was as regards this grow old that I started to get my paintings in one unbroken session". These paintings already produce a result much of the air of Louisa's times work, but are more subdued in color.^{[citation needed]}

Her pretend to have to New York City in 1942 was followed by a mature of study below Hans Hofmann, along with additional painters including Robert De Niro, Sr. (father of the actor) and Jane Freilicher. In 1944 she married painter Leland Bell, and until Bell's death in 1991 they enjoyed a partnership of mutual support. Their daughter Temma was born in 1945.

During the mid-1940s, Louisa and Bell met Jean Hélion, whose symbolic style may have influenced Louisa's use of outline in some of her paintings of this period, such as Leland and Temma (1948). Louisa 's first solo exhibition took place at Jane Street Gallery in New York in 1948. Louisa, Bell, and Temma visited Paris in 1951–52 where they frequently met in the same way as Hélion, who introduced them to Alberto Giacometti and Balthus.

While Louisa's comport yourself of the 1950s wise saying her introducing a painterly style of small, gestural brushstrokes and tonal gradations, during the 1960s she gradually without help tonality as her style became characterized by brisk achievement and spacious areas of forthright color.

The paintings of Louisa's unmodified three decades complement Icelandic landscapes, a series of self-portraits, and tabletop still-life arrangements. The landscapes often supplement charmingly stylized depictions of Icelandic horses and sheep. She was to remain an Icelandic citizen everything her life, the inborn characteristics of her indigenous land informing her bold treatment of form and clarity of light. The poet John Ashbery described the result as the "flavor, both mellow and astringent, which no new painter gives us."

In 1996, Louisa was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Cultural Award, and in 1998 became a fanatic of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Delhi, New York in 2000. Her do its stuff is represented in many public collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Reykjavík Art Museum.