Louisa Matthiasdottir's dazzling landscapes, still lifes and self-portraits are "a defining achievement of postwar American art." So writes critic Jed Perl in the first book to survey the extraordinary union of full-out color, spare geometric structure and naturalistic observation that carried Matthiasdottir to the top rank of contemporary realist painters. In Matthiasdottir's self-portraits we confront the stand-alone power of a modern woman. Her ravishing Icelandic landscapes and. Cityscapes are inspired by the yearning for independence that has animated an entire nation. This volume, which contains well over 100 color reproductions and texts by major critics and historians, will be a revelation for anybody who is interested in the art of our time. Born in Iceland in 1917, Matthiasdottir studied in Copenhagen and Paris and was a prominent younger member of Iceland's first avant-garde. In 1942 she moved to New York, attended Hans Hofmann's school, and became a key figure in the generation of artists who, beginning in the 1960s, gave representational painting a new kind of urgency. Icelandic art historian Adalsteinn Ingolfsson locates the origins of Matthiasdottir's forceful painterly style in her early graphic designs and her. Immersion in the creative ferment of Reykjavik in the 1930s, when artists and writers were bringing modernist ideals to the land of the Sagas. Martica Sawin sees in Matthiasdottir's portraits of her daughter a penetrating record of the mother-daughter relationship, and argues that they comprise a "gradual acknowledgement of individuality and self-sufficiency." We learn of her early encounters with artists such as Alberto Giacometti and Jean Helion, and the gathering support for her paintings among critics, including John Ashbery and Hilton Kramer. Underlying everything that Louisa Matthiasdottir did up until the time of her death. At the age of 83 in 2000 is what Perl calls her "breathtaking clarity. For Matthiasdottir, clarity is the very essence of seeing and feeling -- a core value and an overarching vision." Book jacket.