Acrylic on Canvas
63 3/4 x 51 1/8 in (162 x 130 cm)

Erró Gudmundur, who was born Gudmundur Gudmundsson in Olafsvik, Iceland, in 1932 is an inveterate traveler and a famous figure of the postmodern movement. He started painting on his own by the age of twelve and later studied Fine art in Norway and Italy before settling in Paris in 1958. He began his career in the mid-1950s, painting ghoulish figures. His early tempera and ink paintings on paper depict ghoulish grimacing figures entwined in seemingly never-ending struggles which firmly situated him in the postwar European figurative art scene. An astute observer of art history, Erró incorporated references to works of art in his paintings long before appropriation became synonymous with postmodernism. During his trips around the world, Erró collects pictures (advertisings, current photos, comic strips, post, political documents) that are his sources of inspiration. The artist produces scathing, humorous visual indictments of war, autocracy, mass consumerism, economic and cultural hegemony. He pays twisted homage to canonical artists throughout history in his colorful, cacophonous paintings, silk-screens and collages. Erró has always worked in series, first creating collages that he then projects onto canvases and paints. He observed, ‘Assembling the collage is the most enjoyable part of the work. It offers the most freedom. It is almost like automatic writing. Here you discover formal solutions to filling the surface. The collage is simultaneously an original and a model. Then it’s just a matter of locking yourself up in the studio, sometimes for 15 hours at a stretch.’ Erró’s work has been included in many exhibitions centering on postwar art in Europe, notably “Made in France” in 1997 and “Les Années Pop” (The Pop Years), both at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1989, Erró donated over 3,000 works to the city of Reykjavik. In 2001, a selection from the Erró Collection was featured at the Harbour House, a recently opened branch of the Reykjavik Art Museum.