Mother’s love in the Mother’s Garden 

In Lækjargata, in the middle of downtown Reykjavík, is the work of art Móðurást by Nína Sæmundsson (1892-1965). A work that Nína did in 1924, and was exhibited the same year in Paris, where she was working at the time. A cast of the work was bought to Iceland in 1926, and placed in Mæðragarðurinn (the mother’s garden) in 1930, a small garden, north of Miðbæjarskólinn / now Kvennaskólinn, a garden made especially for mothers and their children. Móðurást is the first work installed in Iceland that is not a monument or a replica of a specific person, as well as the first sculpture by a woman to be placed in a public space. Nína, the youngest of 15 siblings, was born south and east in Fljótshlíð, and studied sculpture at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts, 1916-1920. She then worked for several years in Paris, before moving to New York in 1926 and then west to Los Angeles in 1930, where she worked with a good reputation as a sculptor and visual artist for the rest of her life.