His art is characterised by a clear, French colourist tone, and his artistic roots go back to Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse.

But he experiences nature from the inside, as structures, tones, and fragments of a universe offering opportunities for graphical treatment of form and movement, light colours and rhythms.

The paintings had titles such as Kurpali (chaos, disorder) and Sjón í fuglaeyga (view through a bird's eye) This exhibition did not herald an instant conversion to non-figurative art – in the 1960s and well into the 1970s Ingálvur av Reyni treated landscape motifs as never before, although in a highly abstract way, especially the central theme of the village by the sea.

A series of works from the 1970s are abstractions of groups of figures and have titles such as girl or people by the sea, as can be seen in a trilogy owned by the art museum.

In most recent years Ingálvur av Reyni has chiefly been an abstract painter, if this expression can apply to non-figurative art which is based on nature's own tones and structures.

But even though these drawings in the cases mentioned are more figurative or narrative than the paintings, their themes are still subject to the strict conditions of the line and its enclosing form.