Johann Eyfells

Johann Eyfells (21 June 1923 – 3 December 2019) was an Icelandic artist who lived and worked in Fredericksburg, Texas and at 96 years of age was actively creating new and dynamic works of art on a daily basis.

Originally trained as an architect, he was a working sculptor for over six decades and his creative work never paused, relented or diminished since he left his position of Professor of Art at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Eyfells taught studio courses and worked as a producing and exhibiting artist from 1969 until his retirement from university teaching in 1999.

Unlike most retired art professors Johann's life and work continued to intensify, the scope of his material experimentation expanded as did the dynamics of his creative aesthetic. He was both a thinker and a doer, and his deeply personal philosophical explorations of existence and the universe were ever present in his work and thoughts.

Since he moved to his small ranch in the Hill Country of Texas his creative output significantly increased and he continued to tirelessly explore and discover a world rich with images and objects, often complex in their appearance and profound in their meaning.

The son of the noted Icelandic landscape painter Eyjolfur J. Eyfells (1886–1979) Johann Eyfells had been showing his work at international venues since the 1960s.

The source of his inspiration and the love of his life was his late wife, fellow artist and painter Kristin Halldorsdottir, (1917–2002) a glamorous former Icelandic model and dress designer, who he met in California and married in 1949 shortly before coming to Florida for the first time later that year. Together they attended the University of Florida in Gainesville where Johann earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1953 and where he took a Master of Fine Art degree in sculpture in 1964. Kristin earned two degrees, a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1962 and the Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting in 1963.

Eyfells began creating his abstract sculptures in the early 1960s based on experiments in chemistry and physics, utilizing the interaction of the various inherent and transformative properties of metals, especially aluminum, iron and copper. His art is non-objective and often conceptual in approach. His use of materials varied between metal, wood, paper, cloth, and latex rubber.

Eyfells' creative drive was to document the interaction between time, space and gravity. His work is based on the concepts of receptualism, a theory he developed to explain the essence of his art. He received much recognition throughout his career, including an invitation from the government of Iceland to represent his homeland at the 45th Venice Biennale. His work has been featured in the United Nations' exhibition, World Artists at the Millennium and the nine-museum traveling exhibition What Nature Provides.[2][3][4][5]

In 2016 a documentary/biography on the then 92-year-old artist was released; "A Force in Nature: Johann Eyfells".[6] By Hayden Yates