"Jón Stefánsson was slightly older than (the artist) Johannes S Kjarval, but also began his career towards the end of the Firest World War. No two artists were more unalike. Like every artist who attempts to express the inexpressible, Kjarval left a trail of mistakes and false starts. Stefánsson hardly ever made a mistake, since he always dealt with a concrete reality. Stefánsson was classical in temperament while Kjarval was the quintessential romatic.

     Stefánsson's intelligence and his insistence on formal values gave him an influence which neither Ásgrímur Jónsson nor Kjarval enjoyed. It would be fair to say that formalism, which permeated Icelandic art well into the 1960s, was largely due to Stefánsson's theories and example...

     Stefánsson was very impressed by the theories of Paul Cézanne, whose art and opinions he got to know in Paris... Cézanne's ideas suited Stefánsson's logical turn of mind and when he settled in Iceland in 1924, something which we might turn 'Cézannism' took root in Icelandic Art."

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     'Landscape from a High Lattitude', Edited by Julian Freeman, 1989, p.30.

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     Jón Stefánsson, born in 1881 in Sauðárkrókur, was Iceland's first modern landscape artists and one of the founders of modern art in Iceland. Stefánsson graduated primary school in Reykjavík in 1900 and began studying engineering at the University of Copenhagen for three years before he returned to the art of painting. He studied art in Copenhagen, first at the Technical School from 1903−1905, and later at Kristians Zahrtmann's private school until 1908 when he met Jean Heiberg in Norway. Together with Henrik Sørensen and Gösta Sandels they went to Paris to study at Académie Matisse from 1908−1910. Stefánsson stayed in Paris for four years before returning to Iceland.

     Stefánsson later destroyed almost all of his early work, including his output from his years at the Matisse school. The three surviving paintings from this early period display a close proximity to the work of Matisse and show an interest in occult symbolism rarely found in his later work. His style during these years evolved in a post-impressionist, fauvist direction.

     In 1913 he moved back to Copenhagen, where he continued to work in the ‘new’ Parisian style – development towards increased abstraction, as in cubism and futurism. There he contributed to the modernist magazine Klingen (the Blade).

     He took part in a number of group exhibitions in the Nordic countries, but most often in Charlottenborg. In 1919 the artist works were exhibited in the Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling (The Artists' Autumn Exhibition) in the Den Frie Udstilling (the Free Exhibition) in Copenhagen. He first held a solo exhibition in Iceland in the YMCA hall in Reykjavík in 1920 and then held seven solo exhibitions in the country. Since his passing, eight solo and overview exhibitions of his work have been held in Iceland, most of them under the auspices of the National Gallery of Iceland.

     The artist has works in Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark). The National Gallery of Iceland has a large collection of Jón Stefánsson's work.