Arnar Herbertsson (1933)

Arnar Herbertsson was born in Siglufjördur in 1933 and studied at the Reykjavik Art College in 1959-67.  He took courses in graphic arts with artist Einar Hákonarson in 1970.  Arnar started to exhibit in the 1960s, he was a member in the group SÚM, and there emerged a group of young artists that breathed fresh air in Icelandic art. These artists differed widely in their opinions and ideas concerning art, but they had a collective desire to introduce the newest movements into the art scene and to get as far away as possible from the previous style of painting, the abstract formulism that the post war generation had followed.

Herbertsson has during his career worked with graphics, drawings and paintings and in his works he often deals with the present, for example the relation between man and environment.  Herbertsson’s work has evolved in a specific manner. A notion of subconscious sentiments, where the subject is often both in and out of time and space and the use of symbols, is important.  Around 1992 Herbertsson got acquainted with a very special style of painting based on broken forms, a style we often connect to pop art.  Surrealistic iconography and the atmosphere of a void of time is recurrent in Herbertsson’s work.  Herbertsson has collaborated in many exhibitions in Iceland and abroad and has had a few one-man shows in Iceland.