The Harbour City warmly welcomes visitors to the opening of two new exhibitions. Saturday, 14th January at 2 p.m.. In the main hall of Hafnarborg, the exhibition will be opened. Joke featuring works spanning the career of the artist Sóley Eiríksdóttir (1957-1994), and last year a magnificent donation of artworks was added to the Hafnarborg collection when the museum was presented with a selection of the artist's powerful concrete sculptures. The exhibition will feature the works that have now been added to the Hafnarborg collection, alongside other works owned by Hafnarborg, other public collections and private collectors. The curators are Aldís Arnardóttir and Aðalheiður Valgeirsdóttir.

The exhibition will then be opened in Sverrisal. Untitled, which will feature works by Eiríkur Smith (1925-2016), an artist and the father of Sóley, both of whom were strongly connected to the museum and left their mark on Hafnarborg's exhibition programme from its inception. The exhibition will primarily feature Eiríkur's gouaches from the first half of the 1950s, many of which have not been shown publicly before. Furthermore, the artist's works from this period are rare, as Eiríkur burned a number of his works in a gravel pit in Hafnarfjörður in 1957, but the works that have been preserved nevertheless bear witness to the fact that Eiríkur had a good command of the figuration of hard-edge art, although he chose to take a different path in his artistic creation thereafter.

Sóley Eiríksdóttir She studied at the Metalworking Department of the Technical College in Hafnarfjörður for one year after her studies at Flensborg School. In 1975, she began her studies at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, first in the teacher training department, before graduating from the school's ceramics department in 1981. Sóley exhibited her work widely during her short career, including at Kjarvalsstaðir, Hafnarborg, Langbrók Gallery and the ASÍ Art Museum, as well as holding exhibitions in the United States, Finland, Luxembourg, Canada and Germany.

Eirik Smith studied at the School of Painting and Drawing of Finn Jónsson and Jóhann Briem in the winter of 1939-1940 and at the School of Handicrafts and Fine Arts from 1946-1948. That same year, he went to Copenhagen to study until 1950, and in 1951 he travelled to Paris where he studied fine art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére. He held numerous solo exhibitions, as well as taking part in group exhibitions around the world during his long career. Works by Eiríkur can be found in various collections, such as the National Gallery of Iceland, the Gerðarsafn and the Reykjavík Art Museum, and in addition, Hafnarborg preserves around 400 works by the artist.

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, writer and art historian, addresses the guests at the opening.

It should also be noted that a lavish exhibition catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition of works by Sóley Eiríksdóttir.

Free admission – see you at Hafnarborg.