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Max Ernst | Dada / Surrealist painter


Max Ernst, in full Maximilian Maria Ernst (born April 2, 1891, Brühl, Germany - died April 1, 1976, Paris, France), German painter and sculptor who was one of the leading advocates of irrationality in art and an originator of the Automatism movement of Surrealism. He became a naturalized citizen of both the United States, 1948 and France, 1958.
Ernst’s early interests were psychiatry and philosophy, but he abandoned his studies at the University of Bonn for painting.


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After serving in the German army during World War I, Ernst was converted to Dada, a nihilistic art movement, and formed a group of Dada artists in Cologne. With the artist-poet Jean Arp, he edited journals and created a scandal by staging a Dada exhibit in a public restroom.
More important, however, were his Dada collages and photomontages, such as Here Everything Is Still Floating (1920), a startlingly illogical composition made from cutout photographs of insects, fish, and anatomical drawings ingeniously arranged to suggest the multiple identity of the things depicted.
In 1922 Ernst moved to Paris, where two years later he became a founding member of the Surrealists, a group of artists and writers whose work grew out of fantasies evoked from the unconscious.
To stimulate the flow of imagery from his unconscious mind, Ernst began in 1925 to use the techniques of frottage (pencil rubbings of such things as wood grain, fabric, or leaves) and decalcomania (the technique of transferring paint from one surface to another by pressing the two surfaces together).
Contemplating the accidental patterns and textures resulting from these techniques, he allowed free association to suggest images he subsequently used in a series of drawings (Histoire naturelle, 1926) and in many paintings, such as The Great Forest (1927) and The Temptation of St. Anthony (1945). These vast swamplike landscapes stem ultimately from the tradition of nature mysticism of the German Romantics.

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

In 1929 Ernst returned to collage and created The Woman with 100 Heads, his first “collage novel”- a sequence of illustrations assembled from 19th- and 20th-century reading material and a format which he is credited with having invented. Soon afterward he created the collage novels A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil (1930) and A Week of Kindness (1934).
After 1934 Ernst’s activities centred increasingly on sculpture, using improvised techniques in this medium just as he had in painting. Oedipus II (1934), for example, was cast from a stack of precariously balanced wooden pails to form a belligerent-looking phallic image.

At the outbreak of World War II, Ernst moved to the United States, where he joined his third wife, the collector and gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim (divorced 1943), and his son, the American painter Jimmy Ernst. While living on Long Island, New York, and after 1946 in Sedona, Arizona (with his fourth wife, the American painter Dorothea Tanning), he concentrated on such sculptures as The King Playing with the Queen (1944), which shows African influence. After his return to France in 1953, his work became less experimental: he spent much time perfecting his modeling technique in traditional sculptural materials. | Written by: Naomi Blumberg © Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter


Max Ernst (Brühl, 2 aprile 1891 - Parigi, 1º aprile 1976) è stato un pittore e scultore Tedesco naturalizzato francese. Viene considerato uno dei maggiori esponenti del surrealismo.
Max Ernst nasce a Brühl, vicino a Colonia. Nel 1909 si iscrive all'Università di Bonn per studiare filosofia, frequentando anche dei corsi rivolti alla psicologia e all'arte degli alienati, ma abbandona presto questo indirizzo per dedicarsi al mondo dell'arte. Nel 1912 fonda, assieme ad August Macke il gruppo "Das Junge Rheinland", esponendo per la prima volta a Colonia alcune sue opere alla Galerie Feldman.
Questa città, due anni dopo, gli farà conoscere Hans Arp, con il quale stringerà un'amicizia che durerà tutta la vita.
Nell'agosto dell'anno seguente si reca per la prima volta a Parigi. Partecipa alla Prima guerra mondiale. Nonostante il servizio militare, Ernst riesce a dedicarsi alla pittura, esponendo alla galleria "Der Sturm" che lo indurrà a pubblicare un articolo Sull'evoluzione del colore. Ritornato a Colonia nel 1918 sposa Luise Strauss. La scoperta della pittura di Giorgio de Chirico lo spinge a realizzare un album di litografie (Fiat Modes Pereat Art); nello stesso anno fonda con Johannes Theodor Baargeld il gruppo dada W/3 West Stupidia; i due artisti pubblicano la rivista Der Ventilator e il Bullettin D e organizzano la prima mostra Dada a Colonia.

Nel suo secondo viaggio a Parigi nel 1920, ha modo di farsi apprezzare dai critici della capitale, riuscendo ad esporre alcune sue creazioni presso la "Galerie Au Sans Pareil". La prima esposizione avvenne nell'anno 1921 presso la Galerie au Sang Pareil di Parigi. Importante è il suo incontro con alcuni esponenti del surrealismo, come André Breton e Paul Éluard; dalla sua collaborazione con quest'ultimo nascono due volumi, Les malheurs des immortels e Répétition, 1922. È il periodo in cui, forse ispirato da un suggestivo viaggio in Oriente, elabora una nuova tecnica pittorica, il frottage, con il quale realizza un ciclo di immagini pubblicate nel volume Histoire naturelle, 1926. Nel 1929 pubblica il primo dei suoi romanzi-collage, La Femme 100 têtes, e l'anno dopo collabora con Salvador Dalí e Luis Buñuel al film L'âge d'or.
Nel 1930 realizzò Reve d'une petite fille qui voulut entrer au Carmel, mentre nel 1934 fu la volta di Une semaine de bonté ("Una settimana di bontà"). Le tavole di questi romanzi-collages erano realizzate con collages di immagini ricavate da opere scientifiche, enciclopedie mediche, cataloghi o racconti illustrati. Il montaggio dei collages era volutamente dissimulato, per regalare all'opera un'apparenza di unità, particolarmente evidente nella versione tipografica. I contrasti con Breton, inducono Ernst ad abbandonare il gruppo surrealista nel 1938 e a trasferirsi, assieme alla pittrice Leonora Carrington, nei pressi di Avignone.
Nel 1941 il pittore raggiunge gli Stati Uniti, dove collabora alla rivista surrealista VVV, e dove rimane fino al 1953. Durante questo periodo, trascorso in Arizona, Ernst lavora instancabilmente, sperimentando nuove forme espressive, come il dripping, e realizzando importanti sculture tra le quali, per esempio, Il re che gioca con la regina (1944). Negli Stati Uniti si sposa per ben due volte: la prima con Peggy Guggenheim, nel 1941, la seconda con Dorothea Tanning. Dopo essere rientrato in Europa, vince il primo premio alla Biennale di Venezia nel 1954. Muore a Parigi il primo aprile del 1976.

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Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter

Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter Max Ernst French Dadaist Surrealist Painter