Paintings from Home, on display in the West Wing of Kjarvalstadir.

Home Sweet Home

We all come from the countryside, used to be a saying in Iceland. It wasn’t until the post-war years that urban communities began to form in earnest in Iceland—people left their farms to the tender mercies of the Icelandic elements and moved to the small townships dotting the shoreline around the country, especially the capital, Reykjavík. The “Paintings from Home” exhibition, curated by Markús Þór Andrésson, brings together a hundred artists spanning a hundred years at the Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir. It’s a fantastic exhibition where the guest travels around Iceland through a history that spans nearly a century. We stop by and steal glances at fjords, valleys, villages, and towns through the eyes of people who know the locations better than anyone else, because the tableaus depict their homes—sweet homes. These are paintings filled with love and warmth, brimming with emotions for local customs and memories of times past. Interestingly, on this journey, we are unusually lucky with the weather for a trip around Iceland, as stated in the exhibition program. However, there is bad weather in some places, such as Grindavík, Borgarnes, or Djúpivogur. Also, when Tintin and Captain Haddock visited sunny Akureyri—the climate haven that is the northern capital of Iceland—they caught a nasty blizzard. It must be an exception to the rule to capture these moments in the aforementioned locations, which are widely renowned for exceptionally pleasant weather.