Kristján Gudmundsson



Kristján Gudmundsson is one of the most important conceptual artists to emerge from Iceland in the mid-1960s. His involvement with the SÚM movement (1965-1978) challenged the traditional Icelandic interpretation of art as being solely rooted in landscape painting and nature. Influenced by international artists such as Donald Judd, Richard Long, and Dieter Roth, Gudmundsson in turn questioned the nature of art throughout his career by upending our assumptions of what it is.

In the early 1970s, he began exploring the medium of drawing, increasingly stripping his works of emotional expressiveness and focusing on the materials themselves. His minimal sculptures and wall compositions are composed of a wide range of materials, including graphite blocks, pencil leads, water levels, paper rolls, aluminum-framed window panes, and plastic logos. Gudmundsson’s work reflects a personal minimal aesthetic philosophy, which finds its voice through its application, resonating with an understated sense of poetry, humor, and pragmatism. This is most evident in his potential drawings, which combine graphite rods with various-sized paper rolls, reducing the concept of the drawing to its essential components.

In 2010, Gudmundsson received the prestigious Carnegie Award in recognition of his lifelong artistic work, which continues to explore minimalist themes, particularly the poetic tension between something and nothing.

Kristján Gudmundsson (*1941 on Snæfellsnes Peninsula) lives and works in Reykjavik. Throughout his career, he exhibited in numerous important institutions worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), MOCA (Los Angeles), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Weserburg Museum (Bremen, DE), Marta Herford (Herford, DE), Belevedere (Vienna), EMMA (Espoo, FI), National Gallery of Iceland (Reykjavík), and Reykjavík Art Museum. His works are also included in various international collections, such as Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Kiasma Museum (Helsinki), and Museum of Contemporary Art (Oslo). He represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 1982.