ABSTRACT
Juliana Sveinsdottir was a prominent Icelandic-Danish painter and textile artist. She moved from Iceland, where she grew up in the remote Westman Islands, to Copenhagen in 1911 to study painting. The art historical narrative of Sveinsdottir’s life, while acknowledging her importance as an artist, has focused on her recurring reservations about her career, her dependence upon male colleagues, and an ambiguous relationship between her Danish life and Icelandic nationality. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Sveinsdottir’s work underwent a significant change. When Sveinsdottir’s returned to Iceland in 1946, she used the same approach in her Icelandic landscapes. Sveinsdottir’s textiles were always more abstract than her paintings. In 1927, Sveinsdottir established herself in Copenhagen with a private exhibition at Den Frie Udstilling and Den islandske Udstilling at the Royal Danish Academy.
