"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 studied engineering at the University of Copenhagen for three years before returning to painting. He studied art in first at the Technical School in Copenhagen from 1903−1905, and later at Kristians Zahrtmann's private school until 1908 when he met fellow artist Jean Heiberg. 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 styles towards the increased abstraction 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 The Artists' Autumn Exhibition (Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling) and in the Free Exhibition (Den Frie Udstilling) in Copenhagen. His first solo exhibition in Iceland was at the YMCA hall in Reykjavík in 1920. Later he held seven additional solo exhibitions between 1921 and 1960. Since his passing, eight additional 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 National Gallery of Denmark (SMK). The National Gallery of Iceland has a large collection of Jón Stefánsson's work.