Erró is an Icelandic painter born in 1932. He studied plastic arts and mainly painting at the Fine Arts of Reykjavík and Oslo from 1949 to 1952, then mosaic at the Fine Arts of Florence in 1955. In these different schools, he specializes first in the technique of cut paper before devoting himself to the mosaic. He moved to Paris in 1958 and met the artists of the surrealist movement. In a world of comics, Erró meets cartoon figures and historical despots. He constantly gleans visuals from newspapers, advertising, or illustration to create his collages. Cultural samples from all the countries he travels through. In this way, comics and Chinese propaganda can and will be found on the same level.
He creates visual shocks, mixing temporality as well as borders. Seeing a Walt Disney hero alongside a dictator is surprising. His drawings are resolutely committed and tackle political themes head on. To denounce and criticize the events that the artist attacks, he will also play on the field of humor and derision. Totalitarian regimes, consumer society and the war in Iraq will be his main spearhead in his artistic struggle.
Having the habit of working in cycles, his collages will move from one universe to another, creating great gaps and can go from a series on eroticism to a second on the conquest of space. In his work "Méca-Make-Up", Erró will extract faces of mannequins from the press that he will assemble with mechanical materials from cars or cameras.
His works have marked the history of art and are present in museums around the world and serve as references in narrative figuration and collages.
