Erró

Biography

In 1964 a painting called “Foodscape” hung in an exhibition at the Gertrude Stein Gallery in New York. Its author had not drawn food from life: he cut images out of advertisements, glued them into a collage, and only then transferred it to canvas.

This method became his principal one.

Guðmundur Guðmundsson was born on 19 July 1932 in Ólafsvík, Iceland. The pseudonym Erró stuck to him later. He began his studies in Reykjavík, in 1949 or in 1952 (the sources differ), and then studied in Oslo. After that he went to Italy: in Florence and Ravenna he learned mosaic, entered the mosaic school in Ravenna in 1955 and worked there until 1958. His first solo exhibition took place in 1956 at the Galleria Montenapoleone in Milan. His manner was shaped by an exhibition of Mexican art in Stockholm, German Expressionism, and Hieronymus Bosch and El Greco, whom he saw in the Prado. That is what biographers say; I would add that in his later canvases, crowded with figures, the Bosch element is the strongest.

In 1958 Erró moved to Paris. There he met people close to the Surrealists: André Breton, Roberto Matta, Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Joan Miró and Marcel Duchamp. In 1960 he took part in the exhibition “Antiprocès”. His early work touched on mechanization and support for Algeria’s struggle for independence; in 1962 his “mechanical” texts appeared, among them “Mecanismo, mécamanifeste”. In 1962–1963 he made sets and masks for Éric Duvivier’s film “Concerto mécanique pour la folie”, and in 1964–1967 he made his own film, “Grimaces”. He also took part in actions with Jean-Jacques Lebel (1963–1965). In October 1963 he opened a solo exhibition with the happening “Les Critiques d’art”, and in 1964 at the American Center in Paris he staged the happening “Gold Water”. He also had a hand in the posters and slogans of May 1968.

In 1963 he visited New York for the first time and found himself among participants in avant-garde events and experimental cinema. The language of advertising, comics and newspaper photographs pushed him towards collage. At first collage gave him contrasts, then it became the model for his paintings: found pictures were assembled, and the result was transferred to canvas. From 1961 to 1968 he exhibited every year at the Paris Salon de Mai. He lived by turns in Paris, in Thailand and on the island of Formentera.

In the 1970s political satire predominated in his pictures. He mocked both capitalist and communist societies, propaganda above all. Most often he depicted Mao Zedong, in the series “Chinese Paintings”, placing him in various settings and keeping a poster-like manner. Critics place him in Pop Art, Surrealism and Narrative Figuration; in France he is called one of the founders of the last. He also paid tribute to masters of the past: “The Background of Pollock” is in the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. It may be his most direct work about the history of art.

In 1982 he was commissioned to paint a giant fresco in Angoulême. In 1986 he represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale. In 1988, on the commission of Pierre Mauroy, the Erró Room appeared in the town hall of Lille. In 1989 he donated a large part of his works and personal archives to the City of Reykjavík; the collection is managed by the Reykjavik Art Museum. In 1997, in memory of his aunt, Guðmunda Kristinsdóttir, he founded a fund to support young Icelandic women artists.

Exhibitions took place around the world: the Centre Pompidou in 2010 (“Fifty Years of Collage”), a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon in 2014–2015, and a solo exhibition at Perrotin in New York in 2020. In 2008 he hung a canvas thirty metres long on the façade of the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville in Paris. From the 1970s he made series of prints, and since 2013 he has worked in aquatint in low relief.

In 2010 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, and in 2020 he received the rank of Officer. In 2025 the Icelandic Visual Arts Council gave him its Honorary Award. He lives in France and Spain.