Jóhannes Geir Jónsson

Who was Jóhannes Geir Jónsson?

Jóhannes Geir Jónsson was an Icelandic painter.

He was born and raised in Skagafjörður in northern Iceland. His father was a local schoolmaster; his much younger mother died from child labour when he was 9 years old. As a child Jóhannes demonstrated a talent for drawing and painting. When the time came, he eventually persuaded his father to allow him to pursue his artistic interests rather than the academic career pre-planned for him.

He studied art in Reykjavík and subsequently in Copenhagen in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Although he earned high remarks from his respected tutors, he initially had trouble making a living from his art after his homecoming, working mainly as an illustrator for advertisement agencies. He had trouble "finding his own style", and became depressive, which proved to be a blessing in disguise: Rather than painting the "classic" landscapes deriative of contemporary Icelandic artists, he began painting dark images from his youth in northern Iceland, seemingly haunted by the early loss of his mother and the strict upbringing by his widowed father.