Else Christie Kielland was born in the coastal city of Bergen in Norway. She grew up in a bourgeois cultural home, with a pianist mother and an architect father. In 1923, E. Kielland was accepted by the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts. Her family had a close relationship with her great-uncle, writer Alexander Kielland and great-aunt, painter Kitty Kielland (1843–1914), as well as with painter Harriet Backer (1845–1932), who remained E. C. Kielland’s close friend and private tutor until her death in 1932. H. Backer’s teaching, which took place outside the academy, contributed most to E. C. Kielland’s artistic development.

In 1929, E. C. Kielland had her first solo exhibition at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo, which received very favourable reviews. In the following year, she had her debut at the prestigious annual Norwegian Høstutstillingen [The autumn exhibition]. E. C. Kielland is known mainly as a painter, but her portfolio includes different media, such as tapestry weaving. She enjoyed working with Norwegian landscapes, playing with the natural elements’ contribution to the sense of space. This is expressed in her painting Aften over byen [Evening over the city, 1948], where she does away with the traditional perspective, and in her depiction of a Norwegian river, Suldalslågen (1938). E. C. Kielland frequently painted portraits of her acquaintances from the cultural scene, such as the famous portrait of composer David Monrad Johansen, Komponisten [The Composer, 1934]. The figurative portrait of the composer contrasts with the background abstract composition of large, coloured areas juxtaposed against each other.

E. C. Kielland’s paintings are characterised by a strong interest in geometry and formal structure in composition. She learned this from H. Backer, who insisted on the importance of formal structure and focused on the relationship between form and space in a composition. E. C. Kielland applied these lessons in her practice, both as a painter and a writer. Reflecting on the lack of a theoretical foundation in the visual arts, E. C. Kielland started art historical research into formal laws and principles in arts and architecture. To establish a theoretical foundation, she studied Persian miniatures in Berlin in 1929 and the old masters in Siena in 1932. These trips revolved around self-studies of famous artworks, and then copying them to get an understanding of their construction. After the Second World War, she researched Egyptian art, as wells as Norse motifs, which piqued her interest in geometry, two-dimensionality and surfaces. E. C. Kielland later applied geometry to woven tapestries, such as Til minne om dem som gav sitt liv på havet [In memory of those who gave their lives at sea, 1962]. Her research resulted in several art historical books, amongst them Geometry in Egyptian Art (1955) and the first detailed biography of H. Backer (1958).

E. C. Kielland gradually produced fewer artworks, but continued her art historical research until her death at nearly 90 years of age. She remains a pioneer in Norwegian geometric painting, and several of her paintings are part of the collections of Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo.