Guðmundur Einarsson, known as Guðmundur frá Miðdal (en. Guðmundur from Miðdalur) (August 5, 1895 – May 23, 1963) was an Icelandic artist. He worked in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, graphics, ceramics, photography, and film, and was also a mountaineer and an author.
Life and career
Guðmundur studied art in Iceland in 1911-13 (with Stefán Eiríksson) and 1916 (with Ríkarður Jónsson and Þórarinn B. Þorláksson), in Copenhagen in 1919-20 and in Munich in 1920–25.[1]
He worked in media including graphics, watercolors and oils, sculpture, glass, copper, silver, and ceramics as well as photography and film. He was a pioneer of ceramics in Iceland.[2] He also designed jewelry, furniture, gardens, and houses and wrote books, including poetry and the 1946 Fjallamenn, illustrated with his photographs.[3][4] His style was eclectic and influenced by romanticism; late in his life he also produced abstract works.
Guðmundur was also a pioneer of mountaineering in Iceland, an explorer and conservationist, and a keen hunter.
Personal life
In 1926 Guðmundur married Therese Zeitner, a Bohemian model who was previously married to the chemist Paul Sternberg. They subsequently divorced, and he remarried to her daughter Lydia Zeitner-Sternberg, a ceramicist who had come to Iceland in 1929 and was the mother of his son Einar. They had a further two sons and one daughter, including the geologist and author Ari Trausti Guðmundsson. Guðmundur also had a son, Guðmundur, the artist Erró, by Soffía Kristinsdóttir. Zeitner continued to live in the household until her death; Zeitner-Sternberg's autobiography, Lífsganga Lydiu, was published in 1992.[5]
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