Erró - Iceland's #1 artist

Several days ago I promised you Erró, then I got distracted by WOW Film Fest, but now here he his!

Erró was born Guðmundur Guðmundsson in 1932. In 1958 he moved to France and wanted to be Ferro, but for legal reasons became Erró instead. He didn't mind the change though; in an interview with Liberation, he explained that 'fer ro' in Icelandic is 'the peace that leaves' while 'er ro' is 'now it is calm', which was suitably poetic for him.

He soon became the most famous artist ever to come out of Iceland, reputed today above all for his comic book style parodies...

Erró, Ding Dong, 1979

....or his vast 'scapes', bringing together countless faces, birds, fish, buildings, whatever. He says it takes him a year to collect all the ingredients for one of these.

Erró, For Dialogue Among Civilisations, for UNESCO, 2003

 However, one part of his work that remains completely unknown (I've been scouring the internet for about half an hour and can't find a reference to it) is his Subatomic collection. Featuring distinctive skeleton-like creatures, this collection is the result of an obsession lasting about a year or two in the mid 50s and formed a large part of the Erró-Drawings exhibition at the Reykjavik Art Museum. The shop had no postcards or posters of them and I loved them so much I had to resort to surreptitious photo-taking.

Later on in the exhibition, we see when Erró had moved to Paris and brought politics fully into his art. This was my favourite.

You can see more of the exhibition and find out about its history in this video:

PS: If you're curious about Iceland's number two artist, it's sculpture Ásmundur Sveinsson. Here's me with one of his works.