Paul Sample:
Janitor's Holiday, 1966
From the series Forty-Seven Years
Oil-alkyd on canvas
50 3/8 x 26 ½ in. (128 x 67 cm)
Reykjavik Art Museum
Erró Collection

Erró described the series Forty-Seven Years, which draws on his archive of Russian and American material, as “a testimony to the similarities of two arts, of two popular spirits.” Paul Sample: Janitor’s Holiday vertically juxtaposes three components: the bucolic farm scene at top reproduces a 1936 painting by the American regionalist Paul Sample, while the bottom recreates a 1958 Soviet painting of three authoritative-looking men in suits. In between, Erró sandwiches a National Geographic–type illustration of a stone-age encampment, distorting historical narrative and suggesting cross-cultural and cross-temporal similarities.