Kristján Guðmundsson, one Iceland’s best known postwar artists, died last Friday at his home in Reykjavík, aged 84, his gallery i8 has announced.
Born in Snæfellsnes in western Iceland to parents who sold frames and art supplies, during his late teens Guðmundsson trained as a pilot, before emerging in the mid-1960s alongside his brother Sigurður, who was then an art student. Together they were founding members of the SÚM (Samband Ungra Myndlistamanna – Association of Young Visual Artists) movement in Reykjavik, alongside the likes of Jón Gunnar Árnason and Hreinn Friðfinnsson. A decentralised group of artists, they looked towards their contemporaries of the Fluxus generation and opened Gallerí SÚM in February 1969.
Guðmundsson moved to Amsterdam in 1970 and was involved in publishing alongside his artmaking. In 1982 he represented Iceland at the 40th Venice Biennale.
Guðmundsson’s visually sparse works involve time, space and other invisible forces. In his ‘supersonic drawings’ he experimented with mark-making by firing a gun parallel to a sheet of paper, the speed and heat of which then left a darkened line on the surface. once around the sun, 1975, shows two thick, hardcover books: one contains pages covered in dots, each representing one second and totalling the time it takes for Earth to orbit the sun; the other shows parallel lines representing the distance Earth travels in one second. This work was named as one of the key influences of Icelandic artist Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir, who represented the country at Venice last year. “[The work] changed my perception of the world and what art can do for a person,” she said in an interview with ArtReview.
