Karolina larusdottir

Karolina Larusdottir sadly died aged 74 in April 2019.

Like Melanie and I, Karolina Larusdottir lived most of her life mainly in and around Cambridge ,which is where we first saw her work. She exhibited with various galleries in the area such as Church Street Gallery in Saffron Walden during the 1980’s , Cambridge Contemporary art more recently and although originally from Iceland she made the UK her home . She lived in Bishops Stortford , just 6 miles from where we are located here in Hertfordshire and had a studio in Barrels Down Road. Her work was also exhibited in the Icelandic Embassy in London.

I am particularly interested in how the impact of family and social history influence different artists style and compositions and Karolina Larusdottir is a case in point. Spending her childhood in Reykjavik, her work retained the mystic elements of Icelandic culture, while the influence of her living in her grandfathers hotel has also impacted on her subject matter. Her grandfather was an Icelandic wrestling champion who worked as a strongman with Barnum circus in the USA and with the escapologist Harry Houdini, founded Hotel Borg, Reykjavik’s first luxury hotel, in 1930. Many of the artist prints and paintings are populated by the hotel’s clients and workers going about their business or they are depicted in strange locations having lunch at a table and being served by a waiter in the middle of the Islandic countryside.

So the art of Karolina Larusdottir could be said to be very much a mixture of the ordinary with the extraordinary and depicts the everyday alongside the surreal. I particularly love the way she intersperses her figures with angels making it feel otherworldly but at the same time familiar and real. So a family portrait includes both the living and dead.

Karolina studied at Sir John Cass College, east London, then went to Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, graduating with a BA in fine art in 1967. Ten years later Karólína returned to art college, studying printmaking during evening classes.

Karólína showed regularly and was included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on several occasions, most recently in 2012.

Her work is well collected and she has a loyal following.