Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism.

Biography

Early life

Ernst was born in Brühl, near Cologne, the third of nine children of a middle-class Catholic family. His father Philipp was a teacher of the deaf and an amateur painter, a devout Christian and a strict disciplinarian. He inspired in Max a penchant for defying authority, while his interest in painting and sketching in nature influenced Max to take up painting himself.[1] In 1909 Ernst enrolled in the University of Bonn, studying philosophy, art history, literature, psychology and psychiatry. He visited asylums and became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill patients; he also started painting that year, producing sketches in the garden of the Brühl castle, and portraits of his sister and himself. In 1911 Ernst befriended August Macke and joined his Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group of artists, deciding to become an artist. In 1912 he visited the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, where works by Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin profoundly influenced his approach to art. His own work was exhibited the same year together with that of the Das Junge Rheinland group, at Galerie Feldman in Cologne, and then in several group exhibitions in 1913.

In 1914 Ernst met Hans Arp in Cologne. The two soon became friends and their relationship lasted for fifty years. After Ernst completed his studies in the summer, his life was interrupted by World War I. Ernst was drafted and served both on the Western and the Eastern front. Such was the devastating effect of the war on the artist that in his autobiography he referred to his time in the army thus: "On the first of August 1914 M[ax].E[rnst]. died. He was resurrected on the eleventh of November 1918." However, for a brief period on the Western front, Ernst was assigned to chart maps, which allowed him to continue painting. Several German Expressionist painters died in action during the war, among them Macke and Franz Marc.

Dada and surrealism

 

Max Ernst, Ubu Imperator, (1923), Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

 

Ernst was demobilized in 1918 and returned to Cologne. He soon married art history student Luise Straus, whom he met in 1914. Next year Ernst visited Paul Klee in Munich and studied paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, which deeply impressed him. The same year, inspired partly by de Chirico and partly by studying mail-order catalogues, teaching-aide manuals, and similar sources, he produced his first collages (notably Fiat modes, a portfolio of lithographs), a technique which would come to dominate his artistic pursuits in the years to come. Also in 1919 Ernst, social activist Johannes Theodor Baargeld, and several colleagues founded the Cologne Dada group. In 1919–20 Ernst and Baargeld published various short-lived magazines such as Der Strom and die schammade, and organized Dada exhibitions.

Ernst's son Ulrich 'Jimmy' Ernst was born on 24 June 1920; he also became a painter. Ernst's marriage to Luise was short-lived. In 1921 he met Paul Éluard, who became a close lifelong friend. Éluard bought two of Ernst's paintings (Celebes and Oedipus Rex) and selected six collages to illustrate his poetry collection Répétitions. A year later the two collaborated on Les malheurs des immortels, and then, with André Breton whom Ernst met in 1921, on the magazine Litterature. In 1922, unable to secure the necessary papers, Ernst entered France illegally and settled into a ménage à trois with Éluard and his wife Gala in Paris suburb Saint-Brice, leaving behind his wife and son. During his first two years in Paris Ernst took various odd jobs to make a living and continued to paint. In 1923 the Éluards moved to a new home in Eaubonne, near Paris, where Ernst painted numerous murals. The same year his works were exhibited at Salon des Indépendants.

 

"Les Fusains": 22, rue Tourlaque, 18th arrondissement of Paris where Max Ernst established a studio in 1925

 

Although apparently accepting the ménage à trois at first, Éluard eventually became more concerned about the affair. In 1924 he abruptly left, first for Monaco, and then for Saigon, Vietnam. He soon asked his wife and Max Ernst to join him; both had to sell numerous paintings to finance the trip. Ernst went to Düsseldorf and sold a large number of his works to a longtime friend, Johanna Ey, owner of gallery Das Junge Rheinland. After a brief time together in Saigon, the trio decided that Gala would remain with Paul. The Éluards returned to Eaubonne in early September, while Ernst followed them some months later, after exploring more of South-East Asia. He returned to Paris in late 1924 and soon signed a contract with Jacques Viot that allowed him to paint full-time. In 1925 Ernst established a studio at 22, rue Tourlaque.

Constantly experimenting, in 1925 Ernst invented a graphic art technique called frottage (see Surrealist techniques), which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images. He also created the 'grattage' technique, in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. He uses this technique in his famous painting Forest and Dove (as shown at the Tate Modern).

The next year he collaborated with Joan Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered grattage in which he troweled pigment from his canvases. He also explored with the technique of decalcomania which involves pressing paint between two surfaces.

Ernst developed a fascination with birds that was prevalent in his work. His alter ego in paintings, which he called Loplop, was a bird. He suggested that this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans. He said that one night when he was young he woke up and found that his beloved bird had died, and a few minutes later his father announced that his sister was born. Loplop often appeared in collages of other artists' work, such as Loplop presents André Breton. Ernst drew a great deal of controversy with his 1926 painting The Virgin Chastises the infant Jesus before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter. In 1927 Ernst married Marie-Berthe Aurenche, and it is thought his relationship with her may have inspired the erotic subject matter of The Kiss and other works of that year. Ernst appeared in the 1930 film L'Âge d'Or, directed by self-identifying Surrealist Luis Buñuel. Ernst began to make sculpture in 1934, and spent time with Alberto Giacometti. In 1938, the American heiress and artistic patron Peggy Guggenheim acquired a number of Max Ernst's works which she displayed in her new museum in London. Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim later were married (1942-1946).

World War II and later life

 

L'Ange du Foyer, (1937)

 

In September 1939, the outbreak of World War II caused Ernst to be interned as an "undesirable foreigner" in Camp des Milles, near Aix-en-Provence, along with fellow surrealist, Hans Bellmer, who had recently emigrated to Paris. Thanks to the intercession of Paul Éluard and other friends, including the journalist Varian Fry, he was discharged a few weeks later. Soon after the Nazi occupation of France, he was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo, but managed to escape and flee to America with the help of Guggenheim. He left behind his lover, Leonora Carrington, and she suffered a major mental breakdown. Ernst and Guggenheim arrived in the United States in 1941 and were married the following year. Along with other artists and friends (Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall) who had fled from the war and lived in New York City, Ernst helped inspire the development of Abstract expressionism.

His marriage to Guggenheim did not last, and in Beverly Hills, California in October 1946, in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet P. Browner, he married Dorothea Tanning. The couple first made their home in Sedona, Arizona. In 1948 Ernst wrote the treatise Beyond Painting. As a result of the publicity, he began to achieve financial success.

In 1953 he and Tanning moved to a small town in the south of France where he continued to work. The City, and the Galeries Nationales du Grand-Palais in Paris published a complete catalogue of his works. In 1966 he created a chess set made of glass which he named "Immortel"; it has been described by the poet André Verdet as "a masterpiece of bewitching magic, worthy of a Maya palace or the residence of a Pharaon".

Ernst died on 1 April 1976 in Paris. He was interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Selected works

Paintings Early works

• Aquis Submersus (1919)
• Trophy, Hypertrophied (1919)
• Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (1919–1920)
• Murdering Airplane (1920)
• The Hat Makes the Man (1920)
• Celebes (1921)
• Oedipus Rex (1922)

First French period

• Pietà or Revolution by Night (1923)
• Saint Cecilia (1923)
• The Wavering Woman (1923)
• Ubu Imperator (1923)
• Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924)
• Woman, Old Man and Flower (1924)
• Paris Dream (1924–25)
• The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: A.B., P.E. and the Artist (1926)
• Forest series, e.g. Forest and Dove (1927), The Wood (1927)
• Loplop series, e.g. Loplop Introduces Loplop (1930), Loplop Introduces a Young Girl (1930)
• City series, e.g. Petrified City (1933), Entire City (1935–36, two versions)
• Garden Aeroplane Trap series (1935–36)
• The Joy of Living (1936)
• The Fascinating Cypress (1940)
• The Robing of the Bride (1940)

American period

• Totem and Taboo (1941)
• Marlene (1941)
• Napoleon in the Wilderness (1941)
• Day and Night (1941–42)
• The Antipope (1942)
• Europe After the Rain II (1940–42)
• Surrealism and Painting (1942)
• Vox Angelica (1943)
• Everyone Here Speaks Latin (1943)
• Painting for Young People (1943)
• The Eye of Silence (1944)
• Dream and Revolution (1945)
• The Phases of the Night (1946)
• Design In Nature (1947)
• Inspired Hill (1950)
• Colorado of Medusa, Color-Raft of Medusa (1953)

Second French period

• Mundus est fabula (1959)
• The Garden of France (1962)
• The Sky Marries the Earth (1964)
• The World of the Naive (1965)
• Ubu, Father and Son (1966)
• Birth of a Galaxy (1969)
• "La dernière forêt" (The last forest) (1960–1970)

Collages, lithographs, drawings, illustrations, etc.

• Fiat modes (1919, portfolio of lithographs)
• Illustrations for books by Paul Éluard: Répétitions (1921), Les malheurs des immortels (1922), Au défaut du silence (1925)
• Histoire Naturelle (1926, frottage drawings)
• La femme 100 têtes (1929, graphic novel)
• Rêve d'une petite fille qui voulut entrer au carmel (1930, graphic novel)
• Une Semaine de Bonté (1934, graphic novel)
• Paramythes (1949, collages with poems)
• Illustrations for editions of works by Lewis Carroll: Symbolic Logic (1966, under the title Logique sans peine), The Hunting of the Snark (1968), and Lewis Carrols Wunderhorn (1970, an anthology of texts)
• Aux petits agneaux (1971, lithographs)
• Paysage marin avec capucin (1972, illustrated book with essays by various authors)
• Oiseaux en peril (1975, etchings with aquatint in colors; published posthumously)

Sculpture

• Bird (c. 1924)
• Oedipus (1934, two versions)
• Moonmad (1944)
• An Anxious Friend (1944)
• Capricorn (1948)
• Two and Two Make One (1956)
• Immortel (1966–67)

Ernst in modern culture

• Many of Ernst's works from Une Semaine de Bonté are used in albums by American rock group The Mars Volta. Also, Barefoot In The Head, a collaboration between guitarist Thurston Moore and saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich of Borbetomagus, features a collage from this same book.
• American rock group Mission of Burma titled two songs after the artist: "Max Ernst" was the b-side of their first 1980 single (now included on the CD of Signals, Calls and Marches), mentioning two of Ernst's paintings (The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus and Garden Airplane-Trap) and ending with the words "Dada dada dada ..." repeated many times and distorted via tape loop; their 2002 album OnOffOn features "Max Ernst's Dream".
• Writer J. G. Ballard makes numerous references to the art works of Max Ernst in his breakthrough novel The Drowned World (1962) and the experimental collection of short stories The Atrocity Exhibition (1970).
• Europe After the Rain was used by musician John Foxx as the title for the opening track of his 1981 album The Garden.
• (The) Eye Of Silence was used by musician Cavestar (Kevin Crosslin) as the title of a track from his his 1997 album Cavestar.
• The first edition (Jonathan Cape) of J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World and the Penguin paperback edition of James Blish's A Case of Conscience both use details from The Eye of Silence as cover art.

Legacy

Max Ernst's life and career are examined in Peter Schamoni's 1991 documentary Max Ernst. Dedicated to the art historian Werner Spies, it was assembled from interviews with Ernst, stills of his paintings and sculptures, and the memoirs of his wife Dorothea Tanning and son Jimmy. The 101-minute German film was released on DVD with English subtitles by Image Entertainment.

In 2005, "Max Ernst: A Retrospective" opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and included works such as Celebes (1921), Ubu Imperator (1923), and Fireside Angel (1937), which is one of the few definitively political pieces and is sub-titled The Triumph of Surrealism depicting a raging bird-like creature that symbolizes the wave of fascism that enveloped Europe. The exhibition also includes Ernst's works that experiment with free association writing and the techniques of frottage, created from a rubbing from a textured surface; grattage, involving scratching at the surface of a painting; and decalcomania, which involves altering a wet painting by pressing a second surface against it and taking it away.

Ernst's son Jimmy, a well known German/American abstract expressionist painter, who lived on the south shore of Long Island, died in 1984. His memoirs, A Not-So-Still Life, were published shortly before his death. Max Ernst's grandson Eric and his granddaughter Amy are both artists and writers.

Gallery

 

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  Men Shall Know Nothing of This 1923, early Surrealism

   

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  Europe After the Rain II (1940-1942)

   

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  The Max-Ernst-Museum in Brühl