Erró

Erró is an Icelandic Pop artist known for his work in collage. He is born in 1932 Gudmundur Gudmundsson, in Olafsvik, Iceland, and studied engraving, fresco, and painting at the Academy of Oslo. He lives and works in Paris, France, and was one of the radical artists of the late 1950s to early 1960s on the Paris art scene to commit to a newly figurative painting, critical of its socio-political context. He settled in Paris in the year 1958 after completing his studies in Oslo and Florence.

In 1961, soon after settling in Paris, the artist took part in new figuration exhibitions alongside Gérard Fromanger, Jacques Monory, Bernard Rancillac, Valerio Adami and Peter Klasen, among others. He notably participated in one of the narrative figuration’s seminal exhibitions, at Galerie Creuze in 1965. Seeking a de-mythologization of everyday life in the consumer society, Erró and his fellow artists manifested the power structures that constituted these myths by drawing awareness to the procedures behind image-making, and thus the manipulative power behind them. His visual vocabulary drew on popular imagery found in everyday life, political events and the history of art, increasingly integrating comic-strip’s language into his work.

During several trips to New York in 1963-4 and between 1966 and 1971, Erró met American pop artists Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine, among others. His style is known for being inspired by reassembling imagery from a variety of popular sources including advertisements, comics, and posters, earning him comparisons to earlier Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and James Rosenquist.

In the world of comics, Erró brought together cartoon characters and historical despots. He constantly gleans visuals in newspapers, advertising, or illustration, in order to make up his collages these include cultural samples from all the countries he visited. In this manner, comics and Chinese propaganda can and are on the same level.

He is able to create a visual impact, mixing both the temporal aspect and boundaries. Seeing a Walt Disney hero next to a dictator isn't surprising. He is committed through his works and tackles politics at full throttle. In order to denounce and criticize the events, he plays around with humor and derision. Totalitarian regimes, consumerism, and the Iraq war are his main weapons in the artistic struggle.

The American Interiors series of 1968 for example show the reversal of American military intervention by staging the invasion of peaceful and idealized American bourgeois home interiors by armed Viet-Cong and Maoist troops.

These two opposite images, as found in the press, are juxtaposed to provoke critical awareness of media-constructed clichés as well as of reality. This series of political fiction denounces the American hysteria during the Vietnam War and Cold War. The collage technique used by Erró to reveals the way socio-political clichés are constructed and conveyed, as well as creating new narratives. Frequently re-appropriating art historical images, he paid tribute to old masters at the same time as he was affirming a new figurative and political art. With „Big Tears for Two“ 1963, Erró revisits Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman in 1937 in a comic-strip style, which extends to the work a tragicomic effect.

As an artist, Erró has been working in cycles, his collages moving from one universe to another, creating large gaps, going from a series of eroticism to space conquest. In his work "Méca-Make-Up", for example, Erró extracts faces of models from the press and then assembles them with mechanical materials that belong to cars or cameras.

His works are present in museums throughout the world and are used as references for narrative figuration and collages.

In 2000, the Icelandic Parliament awarded him the Honorary Artists Stipend, and the following year, a museum dedicated to his work opened in Reykjavik. A major retrospective of 50 years’ worth of his collages was held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2010.

EXHIBITIONS

2013 After Picasso, Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna, Austria

2012 Surrounding Bacon and Warhol, musée des Beaux-Arts, Gothenburg, Sweden

          Erró, l'ull planetari, Fundació Stämpfli, Sitges, Spain (solo)

          Trente Tableaux carrés for the gallery Carré, gallery Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, France

          Errós Mekanik, Nordatlantens Brygge, Copenhague, Denmark (solo)

2011 Erró - Drawings, Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Erró/Jean-Jacques Lebel, 1955-2011, Hilger Brot Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria

          Erró. Portrait and landscape, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany (solo)

          Surrounding Bacon and Warhol, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway

2010 Erró. Glycérophtalique 1990-2010, gallery Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, France (solo)

          Erró, Dessins (retrospective), museum of art modern de Saint-Étienne Métropole, Saint-Etienne, France (solo)

          Erró - Portrait + 3. Astronauts; 4. Women from North Africa; 5. Dolls, Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Erró, 50 years of collages, museum national d'Art modern - center Georges Pompidou, cabinet d'art graphic, Paris, France (solo)

          Erró, 50 years of collages, museum of Beaux-Arts, Dole, France (solo)

          Erró - Collage, Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Erró, 50 ans de collages, Galerie d'Art Graphique du Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France (solo)

2009 Erró - Portrait + 1. Monsters; 2. Japanese Love Letters (1979-1980), Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Ingres and the Modern, National Museum of Beaux-Arts du Quebec, Canada

          Ingres et les Modernes, museum Ingres, Montauban, France

          Astrup Fearnley Collection - Rotating Views #2, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway

          The attraction of the space. On the background of the inconnu for find the new, museum of modern art, Saint-Étienne, France

          Vraoum ! Trésors of the dessinée and contemporary art, La Maison rouge, foundation Antoine de Galbert, Paris, France

2008 Erró, the fou d'images, contemporary art space, chapelle de la Visitation, Thonon-les-Bains, France (solo)

          Erró, the fou d'images, museum of Louviers, France (solo)

          Erró. Cité interdite, tableaux interdits, Wharf, center of art contemporary de Basse-Normandie, Hérouville Saint-Clair, France (solo)

          Série Playback, Art Paris, stand gallery Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, France

          Europop, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland

          Figuration narrative. Paris, 1960-1972, galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, France

          La Figuratión narrativa, París 1960-1972, IVAM, Valence, Spain

2007 The Forgotten Future - Erró, Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Toy Story, gallery Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, France

          The Erró Collection, Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Les Histoires extraordinaires de l’art moderne racontées par... Erró (partnership with Media Art Fructidor School), museum Denon, Chalon-sur-Saône, France

          Exploring the Oriental Utopia. Perspective from Erró, Zhang Kexin, Tawatchai Somkong, The National Gallery of Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand

          A radical reform + construction rule. On Erró, Zhang Kexin's Contemporary Arts, Elements MoCA, Beijing, China

          Dolls and minors. A selection of Erró's paintings, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (solo)

2006 Erró. El gran collage del mundo, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM), Valence, Spain (solo)

          Erró. El gran collage del mundo, Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid, Spain (solo)

          The Forgotten Future (Aquarelles 1981-2004), gallery Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, France (solo)

          The Figuration narrative in the public collections, 1964-1977, Museum of Beaux-Arts, Orleans, France

          The Figuration narrative in the public collections, 1964-1977, museum of Beaux-Arts, Dole, France

          La Force de l'art, national galleries of the Grand Palais, Paris, France

          He was a Walt Disney. Aux sources of the art of the studios Disney, national galleries of the Grand Palais, Paris, France

2005 Fundació Es Baluard Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Art, Palma de Majorque, Spain

          Erró. Retrospective 1958-2004, Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, Germany (solo)

          Nos Femmes (Erró, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Bernard Rancillac, Hervé Télémaque), Frissiras Museum, Athens, Greece

          Big Bang, Musée national d'art moderne - center Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

2004 Boulgakov or the spirit of liberté (including Klasen and Monory), national museum of Beaux-Arts, Kiev, Ukraine

          Erró. Les Femmes fatales, Gœthe Institute, New York, USA (solo)

          Erró - Aesthetics and Politics (retrospective), Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Les Amazones en proverbe, gallery Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, France (solo)

          Erró. Works 1958-2003 (retrospective), National Museum of Bellas Artes, La Havana, Cuba (solo)

          The Erró Collection - Scapes, Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

2003 Erró. Hommage à Walt Disney, gallery Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, France (solo)

          Erró - War, Hafnarhús, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (solo)

          Erró, Fahlström, Köpcke, Lebel, Phœnix Cultural Foundation, Falckenberg Collection, Hambourg, Germany (solo)

2002 Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

          Paris, Capital of the Arts 1900-1968, museum Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain

          French collection, museum of modern and contemporary art, Geneva, France

          Erró. The saga des comics américains, Espace d'art contemporain Gustave Fayet, Sérignan, France (solo)

2001 Erró - Images of our century, Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland (solo)

          Les Années Pop (1956-1968), Musée national d'art moderne - center Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

          Passions partagées. Contemporary art collections in Isère, Museum of Peinture, Grenoble, France

          Museum of Modern Art, Monterrey, Mexico

2000 Compositeurs classiques, Contrepoint, Geneva, Switzerland

          Musée des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium

          Bergen Billedgalleri, Bergen Art Museum, Norway

          Norsk Vasskraft og industristadsmuseum, Odda, Norway

          Erró. Political Painting, Fylkesgalleriet, Førde, Norway (solo)

          Erró: images of the siècle, museum of contemporary art, Marseille, France (solo)

          Erró. Les Femmes fatales, museum of Beaux-Arts, Caen, France (solo)

1999 Erró: images du Siecle, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France

1997 Femmes fatales, Geneva, Switzerland

1996 From Mao to Madonna, Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Vienna, Austria

1995 Qoi de neuf, docteur?, Le Salon d'Art, Brussels, Belgium.

          L.A.C. Salon d'Art Contemporain, Hameau-du-Lac, Sigean, France

          Gallery 56, Budapest, Hungary

1994 Palais des Congrès, Paris, France

          Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburg, Scotland

1993 Musée d'Orange, Orange, France

          Musée de Saumur, France

          Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark.

          Porin Taidemuseo, Porin, Finlande

          Gothenburg's Art Museum, Kunsthallen, Gothenburgs, Sweden

1992 Gallery Bergerune & Cie, Paris, France

          Pavillon Français, Exposition Universal, Seville, Spain

          Centre Culturel Nicolas Pomel, Issoire, France

          F.I.A.C. Gallery Montenay, Paris, France

1991 Centre Gérard Philippe, Cergy-Pontoise, France

          Galleria Leroica, Milan, Italy

          Gallery 1000-2000, Paris, France

          Gallery Fandos, Valence, Spain

1955 First exhibition, Paris, France (solo)