The War, 1946                                     
Ink and watercolor on paper
27 ¼  x 15 ¾  in. (69 x 40 cm)
Reykjavik Art Museum, Erró Collection

In The War, made when the artist was 14 years old, Erró situates Iceland smack in the middle of a small, central globe. Silhouetted underneath it is a torpedo radiating skeletons. This work’s accumulation of catastrophic imagery foreshadows his interests both in representing painful history and creating multi-layered representations of what it means to live in the modern world—themes that remain central to Erró’s work.