Born 1932 Gudmundur Gudmundsson, in Olafsvik, Iceland. Lives and works in Paris,聽France.
贰谤谤贸 in front of Strange Galaxy, Berlin, 1971
漏 Ingeborg Lommatzsch
漏 ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2015
Reykjav铆k Art Museum
贰谤谤贸 was one of the radical artists of the late 1950s to early 1960s on the Paris art scene to commit to a newly figurative painting, critical of its socio-political context. After he left Reykjavik to study in Oslo and Florence, 贰谤谤贸 settled in Paris in 1958, taking part from 1961 in new figuration exhibitions alongside G茅rard Fromanger, Jacques Monory, Bernard Rancillac, Valerio Adami and Peter Klasen, among others. He notably participated in one of narrative figuration鈥檚 seminal exhibitions, at Galerie Creuze in 1965. Seeking a de-mythologisation of everyday life in consumer society, 贰谤谤贸 and his fellow artists manifested the power structures that constituted these myths by drawing awareness to the procedures behind image-making, and thus the manipulative power behind them. His visual vocabulary drew on popular imagery found in everyday life, political events and history of art, increasingly integrating comic-strip鈥檚 language into his work. During several trips to New York in 1963-4 and between 1966 and 1971, 贰谤谤贸 met American pop artists Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine, among聽others.
The American Interiors series of 1968 shows the reversal of American military intervention by staging the invasion of peaceful and idealised American bourgeois home interiors by armed Viet-Cong and Maoist troops. These two opposite images, as found in the press, are juxtaposed to provoke critical awareness of media-constructed clich茅s as well as of reality. This series of political fiction denounces the American hysteria during the Vietnam War and Cold War. The collage technique enables 贰谤谤贸 to reveal the way socio-political clich茅s are constructed and conveyed, as well as creating new narratives. Frequently re-appropriating art historical images, he paid tribute to old masters at the same time as he was affirming a new figurative and political art. With Big Tears for Two 1963, 贰谤谤贸 revisits Pablo Picasso鈥檚 Weeping Woman 1937 in a comic-strip style, which extends to the work a tragicomic聽effect.
Elsa Coustou
厂别辫迟别尘产别谤听2015