ABSTRACT
An open debate about expressionism in Icelandic art first occurred in 1925, when Finnur Jónsson returned to Iceland from Germany after having exhibited at the gallery Der Sturm. The critique, directed toward Finnur, revealed a preference for French expressionism among the group of Icelandic artists who had been living in Copenhagen. The Icelandic art scene was both small and remote, though it may have been closer to the European art centers than it appeared at first sight, or at least to Copenhagen, where most of the Icelandic artists were living in the 1910s and early 1920s. Young men and women who had received a formal art education abroad wanted to contribute to what many saw as a “renaissance” of Icelandic art, corresponding to the “renaissance” of the Icelandic Commonwealth, in 1918.
