Louisa Matthiasdottir, “Woman in Reykjavik with Umbrella,” oil on canvas, circa 1980
Tibor de Nagy Gallery
724 Fifth Ave. between 56th & 57th Sts.
Tuesday – Friday through January 11, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-262-5050
www.tibordenagy.com
www.louisamatthiasdottir.com
Looking for a peaceful escape from the bitterly cold weather? The Tibor de Nagy Gallery has just the thing, a beautiful collection of works by Reykjavik-born artist Louisa Matthiasdottir (1917-2000), depicting idyllic scenes in Iceland and Maine. Matthiasdottir concentrates not on the frosty parts there but on the pastoral beauty of the landscape using bright, bold colors in composing pictures that fall somewhere between realism and abstract expressionism. Grass has rarely been so green, the ocean so blue, as in these seventeen oil paintings on canvas and watercolors on paper. Upon entering the gallery, visitors immediately come upon the delightful “Woman in Reykjavik with Umbrella,” in which a faceless woman in brown boots and a blue coat is either opening or closing her red umbrella, with two small houses, the sea, and the sky behind her. None of Matthiasdottir’s figures have faces, yet the works emit a powerful rush of emotion, as in a 1993 self-portrait and “Girl, Sheep, and House.” As poet John Ashbery wrote in a 1982 catalog essay for Matthiasdottir’s show at Schoelkopf House, “One returns to these pictures, as year after year they paradoxically both expand and simplify the world they have chosen to explore, for their strange flavor, both mellow and astringent, which no other painter gives us.” Using long, confident brushstrokes, Matthiasdottir, who also lived and studied in Denmark, Paris, and New York with such teachers as Marcel Gromaire and Hans Hoffman, creates landscapes bursting with color and geometric shapes, most wonderfully in “National Theatre, Reykjavik,” “Harbor Scene,” and the endlessly charming “Icelandic Village.” “Louisa Matthiasdottir: Paintings and Works on Paper” continues at Tibor de Nagy through January 11, along with David Kapp’s far more urban-centric “Collages.” Coincidentally, Matthiasdottir’s husband, Leland Bell — they were married from 1944 until 1991, when Bell passed away at the age of sixty-nine — is one of the featured artists in the National Academy show “See It Loud: Seven Post-War American Painters,” which includes, among other pieces, 1965’s “Croquet Party,” a portrait of six faceless people standing on the grass; Bell was named a National Academician in 1979, Matthiasdottir in 1988.