Erró (Guðmundur Guðmundsson)
Iceland, 1932
Erró was born in Ólafsvík, Western Iceland. He studied Fine Arts in Reykjavik, Oslo, Florence and Ravenne before settling in Paris in 1958. Erró was closely associated with André Breton, Max Ernst and Man Ray and participated in the Surrealist group meetings. In 1961 he exhibited his paintings together with the Figuration Narrative group which aimed to demystify the socio-economic and political changes in Western societies. Erró formed his visual vocabulary by re-appropriating popular imagery found on everyday life, advertising, politics and art history. He travelled to New York during the 1960s and 1970s and met Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. This triggered Erró to integrate comics strips and cartoonized characters in his paintings, sometimes as a commentary on American military intervention. He also explored different media such as performance art and experimental cinema. In 1986, Erró represented Iceland at the Venice Biennial. In 1989, he donated 2000 works to the City of Reykjavik that established the Erró collection within the Reykjavik Art Museum. The major retrospective of his work was held at the Centre Pompidou in 2010.
