Pop's History, 1967, From the series Painting in Groups
Oil-alkyd on canvas, 45 ½ x 67 in. (116 x 170 cm)
Private collection, Switzerland

On his first trip to New York in 1963, Erró encountered the new Pop art movement, which made a deep impression on him. In Pop’s History, painted five years later, he acknowledges his American colleagues and mocks the notion that Pop could have surfaced anywhere but the U.S. In this key work, cartoonish bearded Muscovites in fur hats frolic in the snow while excerpts from Pop classics―Andy Warhol’s Marilyn, Tom Wesselman’s nude, Claes Oldenburg’s hamburger—float above in comic-style balloons. Erró jests that objects and figures considered everyday in the United States may be, for those on the other side of the Cold War divide, both as exotic and as banal as a game of basketball.

Comics—from early-20^th century to the latest cyber-futuristic versions—have long fascinated Erró, who notes: “All pictures are worthy of examination; they can be political, social, historical, scientific, cultural or erotic, they can be comic strips, cartoons, copies, advertisements, or something else, the only thing that matters is whether or not they are printed. The language of the comic strip is universal; everyone understands it, not only the connoisseurs.”