Visual arts on the Faroe Islands

Faroese visual art has undergone a rapid development, which has gained particular momentum since the turn of the millennium. After the late start of visual art in the early 1900s, Faroese art could for a long time be explained and defined quite narrowly as a modernist and nature-loving form of expression, which often resulted in colourist landscape painting. However, it has gradually become more varied and is expressed in several art forms. The landscape still has a dominant position in traditional painting and in the progressive form experiments.

Niels Kruse, Jógvan Waagstein and Kristin í Geil were self-taught visual artists and they were some of the founders of Faroese landscape painting. It seems that Kruse was encouraged to paint by the American explorer Elisabeth Taylor, who stayed for a period in the Faroe Islands. Here she also became acquainted with the Danish visual artist Flora Heilmann and the author Mikkkjal Dánjalsson á Ryggi. Kruse is the most romantic of the three pioneers; he focuses especially on the idyll of the home village in sunset paintings. In Jógvan Waagstein’s paintings, a naturalistic interest can be felt in relation to the country’s topography, while Kristin í Geil focuses on traditions in his paintings. Flora Heilmann was a vicar’s wife at Viðareiði for ten years and repeatedly returned to the Faroe Islands where she painted 57 watercolours of old houses, churches and other motifs of cultural-historical significance, which were donated to the library in Tórshavn. The first Faroese visual artist with higher education was Bergithe Johannessen, who studied in London and Copenhagen, and who painted light landscape watercolours and earned a living as a porcelain painter at the Royal Porcelain Factory in Copenhagen.

Professionalisation of visual arts

Sámal Joensen-Mikines was the first to work professionally with visual art and is thus perceived as the father of Faroese visual art. He strikes a dark, expressive tone that still resonates with contemporary artists such as Øssur Johannesen and others. Mikines studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in the years 1928‑34 under professors Ejnar Nielsen and Aksel Jørgensen, where the former in particular became very important to him both as a mentor and as a friend. Mikines’ works from the 1930s revolves thematically around illness and death, partly inspired by personal losses and experiences, but also by the symbolicexpressive paintings of Norwegian Edvard Munch. The major work Aftur av jarðarferð (Return from funeral, 1937), which is exhibited at Listasavn Føroya (National Gallery of the Faroe Islands), summarises Mikines’ efforts with melancholic, dark images of death as a universal condition and the resulting grief and loss. Later, the expression became brighter and looser with motifs such as pilot whale hunt, Faroese dance, sea scenes and landscapes. His painting style was partly dramatic and unrestrained, partly clarified and modernistically rigorous.

One of the central figures in the emerging Faroese art community was William Heinesen, who in addition to his writing was a curator, critic and visual artist. He engaged in and refined papercut in a series of colourful works, several of which are owned by Listasavn Føroya. He helped decorate the school, Tórshavnar kommunuskúli, which was inaugurated in 1956, together with Janus Kamban and Zacharias Heinesen. The artwork has been preserved and can still be seen, even though the school has been closed and is now partly used for artist studios. Janus Kamban’s large cement relief on the facade, Søgumaðurin (The Storyteller) (1957), has the same simple and clear expression of form that is seen in his sculptures around the Faroe Islands with motifs from everyday life and daily work. His graphic works are also simple like perfectly formed vignettes.

William Heinesen has described how difficult it was to get hold of works by Ruth Smith for exhibitions, as she was unusually self-critical and constantly in doubt about her own achievements. With her, it is mainly about observing and following Aksel Jørgensen’s advice to ‘bring out the colours’, which she successfully manages to do in her impressionistic and light-saturated landscape sketches. The expression is rather expressive in the colourist self-portraits from the 1950s, in which she has paid particular attention to the eyes and the area around them. They are built up by multi-coloured, short brushstrokes that make the image surface vibrate with life.

The landscape as a motif

The first generation of trained visual artists returned home from Copenhagen after World War II, and among them was Ingálvur av Reyni, whose works constitute the next great modernist breakthrough in Faroese art. He began with figurative, strongly colourist paintings with an emphasis on complementary colours, as he had learned at the academy. However, under the guidance of the Danish visual artist Jack Kampmann, he gradually learned to master the choice of colours in his progressively more abstract paintings. In 1960, Ingálvur av Reyni made some entirely non-figurative paintings, but then returned to the Faroese landscape, which he interpreted in huge, abstract compositions with and without figures. It was mainly in later years that he achieved a new colouristic and compositional freedom in magnificent, expressive masterpieces. One of these works has a prominent place behind the rostrum in the Løgting chamber.

Steffan Danielsen was a self-taught loner and his choice of motifs and compositions are unorthodox and original with an unwavering sense of loneliness. In contrast, both mood and colours are brighter and lighter in Frimod Joensen’s naïve paintings of people and animals and their surroundings, which he painted in a refreshingly cheerful manner. Thomas Arge had a special take on the Faroese landscape, which he depicted up close with an almost tactile feel for the moss, stones and grass.

Abstract painting

Relatively abstract, the expressive interpretations of nature have had and still have many distinguished practitioners, for example, Bárður Jákupsson, whose paintings and watercolours alternate between the powerful, the lyrical and the decorative. He has made several major artworks, and he is one of the most important art communicators. Zacharias Heinesen has been a central figure in Faroese art for decades. His compositions with geometric angular mountains and houses in bright colours have almost set a fashion and have become the very symbol of Faroese visual art. He is basically an impressionist and has a particular interest in the light and materiality of nature.

Anker Mortensen continues Ingálvur av Reyni’s abstract tradition and has produced a number of works on paper in a more avant-garde style. He prefers to work with series of pictures with poetic-sounding titles that emphasise the spirituality of the paintings.

Hansina Iversen and Rannvá Pálsdóttir Kunoy are pioneers of nonfigurative painting, which they have consistently explored since the 1990s. Hansina Iversen’s colouristic paintings and lithographs have a sensual effect on the viewer with compositions that appear harmonious and complex at the same time with small deviations that constantly open up new interpretations. Kunoy’s career has an international dimension with exhibitions in Switzerland and New York. Her paintings appear holographic due to a special multicoloured pigment that makes the painting change colour depending on the viewer’s position.

Christianity and LGBT

One of the strongest colourists is Torbjørn Olsen who, in addition to painting urban spaces, depicts people in expressive portraits. He has painted altarpieces in several Faroese and Danish churches, where he emphasises the biblical drama with complementary colours.

Sigrun Gunnarsdóttir’s style is quite different, naive and symbolic, and she too has painted Christian motifs. Her imagery is simple and centres around a figure, a person, a bird or a tree placed on a plain background. In addition, she places a few things that deepen the portrayal as a kind of props in a scenography with a focus on security and love.

The LGBT movement has made great progress in the Faroe Islands in recent years. A queer artistic expression has grown, and multifaceted artists, such as Robin Ova Tolfsen and Dan Helgi í Gong, comment on and question normality and gender identity.

Art in public spaces

Faroese art decorations have grown in number since Tórshavnar Kommuna passed legislation on art decoration of public buildings in 2007. Not least Edward Fuglø has made out a number of decorations at various schools. One of these is the decoration of Skúlin á Fløtum (2020), which consists of three works whose titles are figurative language used in everyday life: Flogvit, Lesihestur and Oddafiskur. Fuglø has interpreted these terms conceptually and decoratively, but also quite concretely – a reading horse made up of letters and the word flogvit, which means genius and plays on the upward motion of birds’ flight, in the form of stuffed birds on a large ring. Astri Luihn has also decorated several schools, e.g. Skúlin við Streymin (2020), illustrating stories from the Faroese ballads, Sjúrðakvæðini.

Economic prosperity and the associated growing tourism have resulted in a renewed interest in art in the public space, and most self-respecting places have some form of decoration or monument.

A real attraction is Hans Pauli Olsen’s large bronze sculpture The Seal Woman from 2014 mounted on the rocks at the water’s edge at Mikladalur in memory of the legend of the seal woman. Hans Pauli Olsen is the Faroe Islands’ most prolific sculptor, and his figures are modelled in clay with a classic cut. The reason why some of the works are also experienced as surreal is that the position of several figures seems to negate the force of gravity. His sculpture of graphic artist Elinborg Lützen (2020) in Klaksvík is the first statue of a named woman to be erected in the Faroe Islands.

For Tróndur Patursson, art is primarily about conveying a cosmic experience on one of his sea voyages together with Tim Severin. Patursson’s latest work is located far below the surface of the sea in the world’s first undersea roundabout in the Eysturoy Tunnel, which he has decorated with blue, green and red lights. At the base of the column, Patursson has placed an 80 m long Corten Steel screen, which he has carved to look like silhouettes of people standing shoulder to shoulder all the way round as a universal symbol of human togetherness.

Diversity and form experiments

Several of the contemporary artists, for example Tóroddur Poulsen and Hanni Bjartalíð, work with a variety of art forms and with a multitude of abstract and figurative visual elements, which they select and put together. Recent years have been characterised by form experiments and by the tendency for art to also move out of the institutions. Jón Sonni Jensen held his exhibition VISCERA CONSTRUCT (2017) in the premises of a scientific company with organic figures and sculptures made of latex, foam and aluminium. The same rounded shapes characterise Randi Samsonsen’s textile works. A non-figurative materiality can be seen in Jóhan Martin Christiansen’s works, and when he held his first special exhibition at Listasavn Føroya in 2016, he exhibited plaster with specific traces of grass and branches.

Nature is also a theme in many of the young artists’ works. Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir’s works has ecocritical perspectives, while surrealist and feminist features can be seen in Anný Djurhuus Øssursdóttir’s pop-up exhibitions that she organises out in nature.

Art institutions, art associations and galleries

The national gallery Listasavn Føroya is located in the northern part of Tórshavn’s plantation. The gallery has a large selection of Faroese art. The oldest part of the museum, designed by J.P. Gregoriussen, was built in 1970, and in 1993, it was extended by the Danish architect Niels F. Truelsen in collaboration with J.P. Gregoriussen.

Since 1999, Steinprent has served as a meeting place for artists and art enthusiasts and consists partly of a workshop that produces lithography and partly of a gallery on the ground floor. The heads of Steinprent are the lithographer Jan Andersson and the graphic artist Fríða Matras Brekku. Per Kirkeby visited Steinprent on a working trip that inspired him to write The trip to the Faroe Islands, just as Ian McKeever, Julie Sass and Claus Carstensen have worked and exhibited at the gallery. The workshop has also collaborated with most of the established Faroese artists, for example the graphic artist Marius Olsen, who lives in Finland, but who regularly works and exhibits his precise prints at Steinprent.

Nordic world names, such as Finnish Terike Haapoja in 2014 and Icelandic Ragnar Kjartansson in 2019, are exhibited in the Nordic House. In Klaksvík, the local art association Norðoya Listafelag holds exhibitions and events, just as Gamla Seglhúsið is a very active gallery with changing exhibitions. In Vágur, a fine selection of Ruth Smith’s works can be experienced by appointment with the Ruth Smith Art Museum, and in Báta and Listasavnið in Leirvík, it is possible to see Jóannis Kristiansen’s paintings.

Further reading

• Association activities and volunteering on the Faroe Islands
• Building style on the Faroe Islands
• Bundni Steinurin (The Knitted Rock)
• Crafts and design on the Faroe Islands
• Film on the Faroe Islands
• Gøtu Fornminnisfelag (Museum Association)
• Literature on the Faroe Islands
• Media on the Faroe Islands
• Museums of cultural history and heritage on the Faroe Islands
• Music on the Faroe Islands
• Theater on the Faroe Islands
• Tradition and tales on the Faroe Islands
• Visual arts on the Faroe Islands

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