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Max Ernst

"Above, in the midst of the night, glides the day, invisible bird."

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Notes of biography

Maximilien Ernst was born in Brühl (Germany) in 1891; he studied in Bonn: philosophy, history of art and psychiatry. He began drawing very early. After the war, Ernst adhered to the Dada movement in Cologne.
After a first personal exhibition organized in 1921, he settled down in Paris (1922). Two years later, he was one of the cosignatories for the "Manifesto of the surrealism” and he participated in all the movement exhibitions. In 1933, his name appeared on the outlaws list of the Nazi regime. In 1940, Max Ernst was considered as a spy of The Reich and, as such, was interned in France in a detention centre. He succeeded his exile to the United States in 1941 and married Peggy Guggenheim; a gallery owner and collector (they parted next year).
In 1946, he married the artist Dorothy Tanning, got back to France in 1953 and obtained the French nationality 5 years later. Very early, Ernst created “collective tickings” which prefigured the famous exquisite corpses. In 1920, he illustrated Eluard’s poems and the future surrealist’s ones. He used automatism and claimed a surrealist universe. In this decade, followed the various subjects of the "hallucinations" which remained recurring in his work. Did he discover these phenomena during his infant diseases?
Follower of the experiment, he worked out new techniques (rubbing), made scratching, stuck papers, paintings with decals. It is in the United States where Ernst finalized technique of the “dripping“ (sticking). There, he was interested in the art of the Amerindians, integrating these worlds of mysterious powers into his works.
Ernst, who began painting without boss, who admired so much Van Gogh, Goya, Gauguin and Kandinsky, died in Paris in 1976. Ernst, an artist who followed his own road and who, almost by chance, met the consecration there.

Artists on display

The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.

Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.

We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.

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Complete work(s)

Complete work(s)
*« L'oeuvre sculpté 1913-1961 », A. Bosquet, Ed. Le point cardinal, 1961 *« Collagen, Inventar und Widerspruch », Verner Spies, M. Du Mont Schauberg Verlag, 1974 All the complete works

Bibliographic track and more

To read about the artist :
  • « Max Ernst », S. Alexandrian, coll. La Septième Face du dé, Ed. Filipacchi, 197
  • « Max Ernst, rétrospective », W. Spies, Gal. nationales du Grand Palais, 1975
  • « Max Ernst, écrits et oeuvre gravé », I. R. C. avec l'étranger, Stuttgart, 1980
  • « Max Ernst », L. Derenthal, J. Pech, coll. Diffusion N.E.F, Ed. Casterman, 1992
  • « Max Ernst », MNAM, Paris, 1998
  • « Max Ernst », cat. d'expo., Ed. Galerie Malingu, Paris, 2003
  • « Max Ernst, vie et œuvre », W. Spies, Ed. Centre Pompidou, 2007
  • « M. Ernst, l'imagier des poètes », J. Drost & autres, PU Paris-Sorbonne, 2008
  • « Une semaine de bonté », coll., cat. d'expo., Musée d'Orsay, Ed. Gallimard, 2009
  • « Max Ernst rétrospective », collectif, Ed. Hatje Cantz, 2013
To read from the artist :
  • « Une semaine de bonté », J.-J. Pauvert, 1963
  • « Ecritures », Ed. Gallimard, Paris, 1970
Website :
www.maxernstmuseum.de

More :


Art movements

+ DADAISM / 1916-1924 / Erwin Blumenfeld, Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Janco, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taueber-Arp, etc.
+ SURREALISM / 1924-1969 / Marcel Duchamp, Dora Maar, Kurt Schwitters, Taro Okamoto, Antonio Berni, etc.
+ ATELIER 17 / 1927-1965 / Anton Prinner, Mauricio Lasansky, Jacques Lipchitz, Mark Rothko, etc.
All art movements

See & discover

Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.

These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier

See & discover