Erró's Dazzling "50 Years of Collage" Special Exhibition

Erró's Dazzling "50 Years of Collage" Special Exhibition: February 17 to May 24 at the Centre Pompidou Museum of Modern Art. Erró (real name Gudmundur Gudmundson) (born 1932) is an Icelandic painter, a leading representative of European narrative figuration and one of Europe's most famous Pop artists, renowned for his panoramic comic and cartoon paintings. His paintings all originate from prior "collage" work, where collage clearly becomes his secret garden of creation, little known to the public. He has been practicing collage for a full 50 years, which is the theme of this special exhibition at the Centre Pompidou Museum of Modern Art (the artist donated these works to the museum last year).

Erró's dazzling "50 Years of Collage" special exhibition is divided into five major series:is the artist's earliest series of décollage, full of surreal situations, mixing sensual bodies and mechanical elements, within a critical attitude towards consumer society. Theseries explores major themes following the 1968 student protests, featuring brilliant montages of folk political propaganda images from China and Vietnam alongside symbolic American imagery, becoming a pioneer of political Pop art. Theseries combines Western masterpieces with various images from contemporary consumer society, forming a dramatic scene; he believes that images of famous paintings, like any consumer image, become precursors of postmodern art.is a series dealing with images of war and violence from historical events, subverting the imaginative space of propaganda and consumption.juxtaposes and mixes numerous cartoons and political comics, using humor amidst the vicissitudes of life to satirize and mock Western, especially American, society.

Erró's collages and art confirm the age of technological reproduction described by the famous philosopher Benjamin. In today's world of images, technological reproduction has become commonplace and is no longer novel, with the even more bewildering virtual world taking its place.

His artist friend Jean-Jacques Lebel wrote: "Erró is neither an illustrator, nor a history painter, nor a cartoonist, nor an erotic painter. He simply constructs his series starting from the anomalies and incredible aspects he observes. This is to say, he does not directly and prudently confront this monstrous or compliant society (……). He only views it through what he collages, with these masses of raw materials - cartoons, political comics, newspapers, magazines, photographs, etc. During his travels, he incessantly scavenges everywhere for all possible images from newspapers, magazines, picture books, art magazines, etc. It's as if this scavenging involves all visible human attitudes. There is no secret, only these signs, extremely intricate or clear, imaginary or concrete, all entrusted to memory."