artist: Nína Tryggvadóttir (Icelandic 1913-1968)
dimensions: 31 x 36 cm art size (approx) / 46 x 52 cm framed size (approx)
medium: graphite on paper
signed
presented in a new hand finished timber frame with archival mat and UV non reflective glass
AU $1650 (approx US $530 / 460 EUROS / 60,500 yen / 395 GBP - for exact current conversion visit xe.com)
artist biography
Nina Tryggvadottir was born in 1913 in Seyðisfjörður, on the East coast of Iceland, where she was raised before moving to Reykjavik with her parents. Tryggvadottir was interested in art from an early age and would take art lessons from her uncle, the landscape painter Ásgrímur Jónsson. In 1935 Tryggvadottir went to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Art, following which, she lived in Paris. After returning to Iceland at the outbreak of WWII, she went to study in New York on a stipend from the Icelandic State. There, she studied under Morris Kantor, Hans Hoffman and Fernand Leger, and exhibited at the prestigious New Art Circle Gallery run by JB Neumann. She was asked to create stage sets and costumes for a staging of the famous ballet, Soldier’s Tale, by Igor Stravinsky and CF Ramus. After being banned from the US under McCarthyism, Tryggvadottir lived in Paris, where she exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne and London, where she showed works at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and also presented numerous solo exhibitions at galleries throughout Europe. She was permitted to move back to NY in 1959 where she lived and worked until the end of her life in 1968.
Tryggvadottir has exhibited internationally and her work resides in numerous private and public collections throughout Europe, Japan, and the United States, including: the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, France; The National Gallery of Iceland; The Reykjavik Municipal Art Gallery, Iceland; and Musee D’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France.
She is Iceland's most important abstract expressionist artist of her generation - as well as painting, her works include collage, portraits, abstract stained glass windows, mosaic murals, stage and set designs, textile designs, and childrens books.
Mainly working in painting she also did paper collage, stained glass work, mosaic and more. She frequently based her compositions on nature where Icelandic landscape and the Nordic light played an important role.
She died on June 18, 1968, in New York.
In 2012, a crater on Mercury was named after Tryggvadóttir.
In May 2018, the Reykjavík City Council signed a declaration of intent between the city and couple Una Dóra Copley and Scott Jeffries to set up an art museum dedicated to Nína Tryggvadóttir. The couple donated their art collection to the city.