FLIGHT OF FORMS The oil-painting “Fugue”, painted by Jóhannes Jóhannesson in 1967- 68, and now in the National Gallery of lceland, is an example of fine balance of colour and form combining with vitality of touch, delicate colour- tone, and rich feeling forthe material. The picture is built up round a strong centre-point, slightly offset to the left, and encircled by curving shapes which form a space into which the eye is drawn. Close to the centre these forms are red, while at the outer edge they are reddish-brown, green, and yellow-green, creating a framework round the red. This ring formation is placed on an almost four-square reddish-brown background which develops into a coarse ochre towards the edges of the picture. The colour texture is rough and thick, so that the background enhances the general movement of the picture, and carries the swirling motion out to the very edges. There is little to entice the eye away, and the observer is held by the strong centre-point around which the rest of the picture is built. Jóhannes Jóhannesson has adopted non-objective expression in this way where the artist’s environment, material or spiritual is interpreted rather than directly imitated. He uses colour and form as a medium of expression in a search for the inner essence and purpose of art, so that the picture surface often becomes a large part of the total effect of the work. From his early figurative works Jóhannes has progressed through geomet- ric plane pictures to more expressionist and poetic use of colour. His later works have developed characteristic forms, particularly circular, which have become more organic in recent years, dominated by the weight and force of colour. Changes of style have never been dramatic in Jóhannes’s art; instead a gradual, logical development has been at work from the very beginning. But in spite of his non-objective style the undertone has always been man and his environment. Jóhannes turned early towards art. At an early age he was painting from art books. But his environment required him to take up a profitable trade. Thus in 1939, at the age of 18, Jóhannes began as a goldsmith’s apprentice with Guðlaugur Magnússon, and worked for him for six years. Here it was possible for him to give vent to his artistic abilities, but he had no sooner finished his apprenticeship at the Reykjavík Technical School in 1945 than he left lceland for art school abroad.

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