Jóhann Eyfells was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1923 but spent most of his life in the United States. He served as an art professor at the University of Central Florida, Orlando from 1969 until his retirement in 1999. In 2002, following the death of his wife—the artist Kristín Halldórsdóttir—he moved to a small ranch outside of Fredericksburg, Texas. During his time in the United States, he maintained a close relationship with the country of his birth and represented Iceland at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993.

This exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center consists of a selection of Cairns, a body of work that Eyfells returned to repeatedly throughout his career. These sculptures are created by pouring various molten metals into the ground; the liquid pushes through the gaps and fissures in the earth to create a cast of negative space. This method allowed Eyfells to somewhat distance himself from the creative act and insert an element of chance. The Cairns are formed in the voids of the ground, evoking the notion that matter is mostly composed of empty space. The works are lyrical representations of Eyfells’s philosophical thinking about the nature of physical matter and artistic practice. 

Eyfells was intrigued by the scale of temporal processes in the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it. “I am speaking about how things appear and disappear,”¹ he said. “Essentially I am not referring to this timeframe of ours, in which things are already at hand; I am attempting to discuss the powers that brought those things into being.”² The Cairns suggest the development and appearance of igneous rock that is formed from solidified lava and is widespread in the Icelandic landscape. However, Eyfells’s intention is not in the specific. “I am moving art away from all analysis involving phenomena that are assumed to be imbued with meaning.”² In choosing to refer to these works as Cairns, Eyfells suggests that they are part of a journey: throughout Iceland, travelers would traditionally create stone stacks intermittently along the length of a path as it crossed a wilderness. These waymarkers were invaluable when the often extreme weather conditions led the paths to be obscured.   

Listasafn Íslands, the National Gallery of Iceland, recently acquired much of the estate of Jóhann Eyfells and the works will be shipped to Iceland later this year. This exhibition can be thought of as Eyfells’s farewell to America, with the Cairns marking the path.  

Nasher Public: Jóhann Eyfells is organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center and curated by guest curator Gavin Morrison.

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¹ “Abstraction as Lineage. A conversation with Jóhann Eyfells” in Jóhann Eyfells (Reykjavík: Listasafn Íslands, 1992) p. 40
²  Ibid p. 39

Biography

Jóhann Eyfells was born in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1923 and died in Fredericksburg, Texas in 2019. In 1944 he left Iceland to study in the USA where he attended University of California, Berkeley; California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland; and he obtained a Bachelor in Architecture from University of Florida, Gainesville in 1953. During a period in the late 1950s, he lived between New York and Reykjavik. In Iceland, he worked as an architect, teacher, and illustrator while developing his approach to art making. At this time, he began to combine ideas from science and philosophy with his material sculptural understanding; this would lead him to be one of the first artists in Iceland to reject formal abstraction in favor of a more direct form of art making. Eyfells returned to Florida in the 1960s and in 1964 graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Florida, Gainesville. For over thirty years, beginning in 1969, Eyfells was a Professor of Art at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. Upon his retirement, and the death of his wife Kristín Halldórsdóttir, he moved to a 10-acre ranch outside of Fredericksburg in the search for more space in which to expand his sculpture practice. He continued to make art until his death in 2019 aged 96.

His work has been exhibited widely, including a retrospective at the National Gallery Iceland, 1992; representing Iceland at the Venice Biennale in 1993 (with Hreinn Friðfinnsson); and a solo exhibition, Jóhann Eyfells: Palpable Forces at Reykjavík Art Museum in 2019. His work has also been included in exhibitions at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark; and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Gavin Morrison is a writer and curator who lives in Dallas. He is currently completing a book on Donald Judd’s relationship with Iceland and will curate an exhibition of the architectural drawings of Donald Judd and Hörður Ágústsson for Listasafn Íslands, Reykjavík, Iceland in January, 2026.