Max Ernst

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Max Ernst
Image:AAA inverobe 11954-2.jpg Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in 1948
Born	April 2 1891(1891-04-02) Brühl, Germany
Died	April 1 1976 (aged 84) Paris, France
Nationality	German
Field	painting, sculpture, poetry
Movement	Dada, Surrealism

Max Ernst (April 2, 1891 – April 1, 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet, considered one of the chief representatives of Dadaism and Surrealism.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Selected works 3 Ernst in modern culture 4 See also 5 Sources 6 External links

[edit] Biography

Max Ernst was born April 2, 1891, in Brühl, Germany, near Cologne. In 1909, he enrolled in the University at Bonn to study philosophy but soon abandoned the courses. He began painting that year, but never received any formal artistic training.^[1]

During World War I he served in the German army, which was a momentous interruption in his career as an artist. He stated in his autobiography, "Max Ernst died the 1st of August, 1914."

After the war, filled with new ideas, Ernst, Jean Arp and social activist Alfred Grünwald, formed the Cologne, Germany Dada group. In 1918 he married the art historian Luise Straus — a stormy relationship that would not last. The couple had a son who was born in 1920, the artist Jimmy Ernst. (Luise died in Auschwitz in 1944.^[2]) In 1919 Ernst visited Paul Klee and created paintings, block prints and collages, and experimented with mixed media.

In 1922, he joined fellow Dadaists André Breton, Gala, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard at the artistic community of Montparnasse.^[1] Constantly experimenting, in 1925 he invented a graphic art technique called frottage, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images.

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.^[3]

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 this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans. He said his sister was born soon after his bird died. 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.^[4] In 1927 he 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 this year.^[5] Ernst began to make sculpture in 1934, and spent time with Alberto Giacometti. In 1938, the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim acquired a number of Max Ernst's works which she displayed in her new museum in London.

With the outbreak of World War II, Max Ernst was arrested by French authorities as a "hostile alien". Thanks to the intercession of Paul Eluard, and other friends including the journalist Varian Fry he was discharged a few weeks later. Soon after the French occupation by the Nazis, he was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo, he managed to escape and flee to America with the help of artists sponsor Peggy Guggenheim.^[1] 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 of 1946, in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet 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.

Ernst died on April 1, 1976, in Paris one day before his birthday.^[1] He was interred there at the Père Lachaise Cemetery

[edit] Selected works

Max Ernst appeared in the 1930 surrealist film "L'age d'or" directed jointly by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel

• Trophy, Hypertrophied (1919)
• Farewell My Beautiful Land of Marie Laurencin. Help! Help! (1919)
• Aquis Submersus (1919)
• Fruit of a Long Experience (1919)
• Two Ambiguous Figures (1919)
• Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (1919-1920)
• Ambiguous Figures (1 Copper Plate, 1 Zinc Plate, 1 Rubber Cloth...) (1919/1920),
• The Hat Makes the Man (1920)
• Murdering Airplane (1920)
• Here Everything is Still Floating (1920)
• Dada Gauguin (1920)
• The Small Fistule that Says Tic Tac (1920)
• The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses (1920-1921)
• The Elephant Celebes (1921)
• Birds, Fish-Snake and Scarecrow (1921)
• Seascape (1921)
• Approaching Puberty or the Pleiads (1921)
• Young Chimera (1921)
• A Friends Reunion (1922)
• Oedipus Rex (1922)
• Castor and Pollution (1923)
• Holy Caecilie - The Invisible Piano (1923)
• Men Shall Know Nothing of This (1923)
• Histoire Naturelle (1923)
• The Equivocal Woman (1923)
• Pietà or Revolution by Night (1923)
• Ubu Imperator (1923)
• Woman, Old Man and Flower (1923-1924)
• Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924)
• Dadaville (1924)
• Mer et Soleil - Lignes de Navigation (1925)
• Paris Dream (1925)
• The Couple in Lace (1925)
• Eve, the Only One Left to Us (1925)
• The Numerous Family (1926)
• The Kiss (1927)
• Der grosse Wald (1927)
• Gulf Stream (1927)
• Forêt (1927)
• Forest and Dove (1927)
• The Wood (1927)
• Fishbone Forest (1927)
• Tree of Life (1928)
• The Sea (1928)
• Die Erwählte des Bösen (1928)
• Et les Papillions se Mettent a Chanter (1929)
• La femme 100 têtes (1929)
• Snow Flowers (1929)
• Loplop Introduces Loplop (1930)
• Rêve d'une Petite Fille Qui Voulut Entrer au Carmel (1930)
• Human Form (1931)
• Zoomorphic Couple (1933)
• The Entire City (1934)
• Une Semaine de Bonté (1934)
• The Whole City (1935)
• Landscape with Wheatgerm (1936)
• The Nymph Echo (1936)
• L’Ange du Foyer ou Le Triomphe du Surréalime (1937)
• The Angel of Hearth and Home (1937)
• Attirement of the Bride (1940)
• Spanish Physician (1940)
• Europe After the Rain (1940-1942)
• Day and Night (1941-1942)
• Surrealism and Painting (1942)
• Window (1943)
• Painting for Young People (1943)
• The Eye of Silence (1943-1944)
• The King Playing with the Queen (1944)
• Moonmad (1944)
• The Table is Set (1944)
• Napoleon in the Wilderness (1944)
• Vox Angelica (1945)
• The Temptation of St. Anthony (1945)
• Phases of the Night (1946)
• Dangerous Correspondence (1947)
• Design in Nature (1947)
• Capricorn (1948)
• Parisian Woman (1950)

• The Weatherman (1951)
• L’oiseau Rose/Der Rosa Vogel (1956)
• Petite Feerie Nocturne (1958)
• Apres Moi le Sommeil (1958)
• Paysage Arizona (1960)
• Ursachen der Sonne (1960)
• The Garden of France (1962)
• Grand Ignorant (1965)
• Corps Enseignant Pour une École de Tueurs (1967)
• Nordlicht am Nordrhein (1968)
• Ein Mond ist guter Dinge (1970)

[edit] 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, and 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.
• The American rock group Mission of Burma titled two songs after the artist: "Max Ernst" was the b-side of their first 1978 single (now included on the CD edition 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".

[edit] See also

• Jimmy Ernst
• Surrealism
• Frottage (surrealist technique)
• Western painting

[edit] Sources

Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Max-Ernst Museum Brühl
• Max Ernst collection The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
• Max Ernst works and biography Olga's Gallery
• Max Ernst works and biography Galerie Ludorff
• Max Ernst gallery Ten Dreams
• "Max Ernst, will-o'-the-wisp" Max Ernst explained to younger generation, Gilbert-Rts
• Max Ernst facts Artfacts.Netca:Max Ernst

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