Hjálmar Stefánsson was born in 1913 in Smyrlaberg in Ásum in Austur-Húnavatnssýsla. He received some education and did various work in his younger years, e.g. he followed Kjarval when the painter was on a journey through the North West of Iceland. Hjálmar was a loner and struggled with his health for many years. When he was around thirty, he moved to Blönduós and began to paint on canvas with great passion. He was bookish and left behind an unpublished manuscript with his reflections which he called The Navel of the Earth. Hjálmar died in 1989. Hjálmar is one of the folk artists as he was uneducated in art. However, his works do not only have the characteristics of a naïve approach, as many of them contain strong characteristics of modern imagery. Hjálmar had an extremely sensitive eye for colors and color combinations and many of his pictures are real treasures. After the exhibition, most of the paintings were transferred to the Museum of Svalbarðsströnd for preservation.
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