On the occasion of the centenary of the painter Louisa Matthíasdóttir, the Icelandic Women's History Museum mounted a micro-exhibition at the National Library in February 2017. Louisa Matthíasdóttir was born in Reykjavík on February 20, 1917 and died in New York on February 26, 2000. At the age of seventeen, she moved to Denmark. She first studied art there and later with Marcel Gromaire in Paris. Louisa moved back to Iceland due to World War II in 1939 and was part of the cultural scene in Iceland until she moved to New York in 1942. She was a regular at Erlendi in Unuhús, along with Nína Tryggvadóttir, Þórbergur Þórðarson, Halldór Laxness and Steinir Steinarr. Steinn is said to have written about Louisa in Time and Water : “[F]rom my consciousness / to your lips / there is a pathless ocean.” After Louisa's death, a manuscript for the children's book "Hölla" was found, which she and Steinn had worked on together in 1940; the book was published in 2000.

In New York, Louisa studied with Hans Hofmann and other painters such as Robert De Niro Sr. and Jane Freilicher. In 1944, she married the American painter Leland Bell. They had one daughter, Temma Bell, in 1945. Louisa's first solo exhibition was at the Jane Street Gallery in New York in 1948. Louisa traveled extensively between the United States, France, and Iceland, mounting exhibitions around the world.

Louisa received the Icelandic Order of the Falcon in 1988, the American-Scandinavian Foundation Cultural Award in 1996, and two years later she became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work is in many private collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and the Reykjavík Art Museum.

Louisa's daughter, Temma Bell, maintains a website about her mother's work and life: http://louisamatthiasdottir.com/ .

The exhibition ended on May 31, 2017.