The Car Crasher, 1959–60
From the series Méca Make-Up
Oil-alkyd on masonite
32 ¼ x 19 ¼ in. (82 x 49 cm)
Reykjavik Art Museum, Erró Collection

Rendering Surrealist collage practices in paint, the works in Erró’s Méca Make-Up series combine visceral body parts with machine-like systems to create strange and unsettling hybrids. Paris in the early 1960s was a hotbed of international artistic activity and political protest. Of his Méca Make-Up series, Erró observes: “It consisted of shock images, like insults. Everything at that time was violent. There was the war in Algeria, then the war in Vietnam. Even rock music was violent.”