Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Icelandic Artists


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Erró (born Guðmundur Guðmundsson in 1932 in Ólafsvík, Iceland) is a postmodern artist. He studied art in Norway and in Italy, and has resided in Paris, Thailand and on the island of Formentera for most of his life. In 1989 he donated a large collection of his works to the Reykjavik Arts Museum, which has put part of it on permanent display and opened a website where the whole collection can be visited."


-- Left: Kirkjubæjarklaustur -- -- Right: Systrastapi --

Erró, or Guðmundur, as he was then still called, was brought up in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, the place where I lived most of my childhood, by his mother and foster-father, along with his three half-brothers and a half-sister (they lived in the little house far to the right in the photo above). I remember him vaguely as a very handsome, dark young man, that came on a visit and later went abroad to study painting. In his childhood home they had some mosaic pictures made by him and also I remember a picture of Systrastapi on the wall on his fosterfathers office, that Guðmundur had drawn as a teenager. His mother was a beautiful and kind woman with white hair, with an air of quiet gentility about her.

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