Ernst, Max (1891–1976). German-born painter, printmaker, collagist, and sculptor who became an American citizen in 1948 and a French citizen in 1958, one of the major figures of Dada and even more so of Surrealism. He was born at Brühl, near Cologne; his father, who taught at a school for deaf and dumb children, was a keen amateur painter. A nervous and imaginative child, he was strangely affected at the age of 14 by the death of a favourite cockatoo on the same day as the birth of a sister. Later (referring to himself in the third person) he wrote that ‘In his imagination Max coupled these two events and charged the baby with the extinction of the bird's life. There followed a series of mystical crises, fits of hysteria, exaltations and depressions. A dangerous confusion between birds and humans became fixed in his mind and asserted itself in his drawings and paintings’ (he came to identify himself with Loplop, a birdlike creature that features in many of his works). In 1909 Ernst began to study philosophy and psychology at Bonn University, but he became fascinated by the art of psychotics (he visited the insane as part of his studies) and in 1911 he abandoned academic study for painting. He had no professional training as an artist, but he was influenced by August Macke, whom he met in 1911. Throughout the First World War he served as an artillery engineer, but thanks to an art-loving commanding officer he was sometimes able to paint, and he exhibited at the Sturm Gallery in 1916. After the war he settled in Cologne, where with his lifelong friend Arp (whom he had met in 1914) he became the leader of the city's Dada group. In 1920 he organized one of Dada's most famous exhibitions in the conservatory of a restaurant: ‘In order to enter the gallery one had to pass through a public lavatory. Inside the public was provided with hatchets with which, if they wanted to, they could attack the objects and paintings exhibited. At the end of the gallery a young girl, dressed in white for her first communion, stood reciting obscene poems’ ( David Gascoyne, A Short Survey of Surrealism, 1935). In 1922 Ernst settled in Paris, where he joined the Surrealist movement on its formation in 1924. Even before then, however, he had painted works that are regarded as Surrealist masterpieces, such as Celebes (Tate Gallery, London, 1921) in which an elephant is transformed into a strange mechanistic monster. The irrational and whimsical imagery seen here, in part inspired by childhood memories, occurs also in his highly original collages. In them he rearranged parts of banal engravings from sources such as trade catalogues and technical journals to create strange and startling scenes, showing, for example, a child with a severed head in her lap where a doll might be expected. He also arranged series of such illustrations with accompanying captions to form ‘collage novels'; the best-known and most ambitious is Une Semaine de bonté (‘A Week of Kindness'), published in Paris in 1934. Other imaginative techniques of which he was a leading exponent were frottage (which he invented in 1925) and decalcomania. In 1930 he appeared in the Surrealist film L'Age d'or, created by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and in 1935 he made his first sculpture (he worked seriously but intermittently in this field, characteristically creating totemic-like figures in bronze).

Ernst left the Surrealist group in 1938, as he refused to comply with André Breton's demand that members should ‘sabotage in every possible way the poetry of Paul Éluard’ (a close friend of Ernst), but the break did not affect his work stylistically. At this time he was living with the British Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, whom he had met in 1936. They set up home at St-Martind'Ardèche, near Avignon, but in 1939, after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was interned as an enemy alien. Éluard helped to secure his release, but he was twice more interned, escaping each time. In 1941 he managed to flee to the USA, where he stayed until 1953 (apart from a visit to France in 1948), living first in or near New York and then in Arizona. While in the USA he collaborated with Breton and Duchamp in the periodical VVV. He was briefly married (his third of four wives) to the American art dealer Peggy Guggenheim, then in 1946 married the American Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning. In 1953 they settled in France, living first in Paris and then from 1955 in Huismes, Loire. Ernst had often struggled financially early in his career, but in 1954 he won the main painting prize at the Venice Biennale and this marked the beginning of a much honoured old age, when he received many awards and was the subject of several major retrospective exhibitions. His work of this time became more lyrical and abstract.

Max Ernst

The German painter Max Ernst (1891-1976), a leading figure in the Dada and surrealist movements, possessed an amazing range of styles and techniques.

Max Ernst was born on April 2, 1891, in Brühl, Germany. His memories of his childhood were remarkably vivid, and they provided him with many subjects for his later paintings. He attended the University of Bonn, where he studied philosophy and abnormal psychology, which also provided material for his art. In 1912 he turned to painting seriously, but it was only in 1918, after his war service, that he began to develop his own style. He made a series of collages, using illustrations from medical and technical magazines to form bizarre juxtapositions of images.

These collages were Ernst's main production when he was active in the Dada group in Cologne from 1919 to 1922. The Dada movement with its irreverent attitude to conventional art and mores appealed to Ernst and his friends. They produced a number of publications, and their most outrageous act was the famous 1920 Cologne Dada exhibition, to enter which the public had to walk through a public urinal. Dadamax was the pseudonym Ernst used during this period.

In 1922 Ernst moved to Paris, where the surrealists were gathering around André Breton. Ernst had already started doing more illusionistic paintings, strongly influenced by Giorgio de Chirico, and Breton and his friends admired them. In 1923 Ernst finished Les Hommes n'en sauront rein, known as the first Surrealist painting because, as the Phaidon Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art says, it possesses "all the characteristic elements of Surealist painting: the dreamlike atmosphere, the irrational juxtaposition of images of widely different assocaitons, the digrams of celestial phenomena, the desert landscape and the central eroticism." In 1924 he completed one of his most famous pieces, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. Ernst himself was a winning figure, very charming and brilliant, and particularly fascinating to women. His romantic life was colorful, with many love affairs and several marriages; these were always accompanied by wild stories, and the surrealists enjoyed his life-style as much as they did his art.

In 1925 Ernst introduced his new technique of frottage; he placed sheets of paper on floorboards, tiles, bricks, or whatever was to hand and rubbed them with graphite, producing strange obsessive shapes. This technique fitted in with the surrealist cult of automatic drawing and writing, with their reliance on chance. The texture of these frottage drawings was then applied by Ernst to his paintings, combined with other techniques he invented. He did a series of haunting pictures of forests, birds, and hybrid beasts executed in a rough, painterly fashion. In the 1930s he returned to a more illusionistic style, though often with the same mythology as in his early works; at the same time he began doing sculpture, at first using boulders and carving them slightly to reveal hidden poetic shapes.

At the outbreak of World War II Ernst, like many other surrealists, made his way to the United States, where he married Peggy Guggenheim, the American art collector and dealer. The marriage ended in divorce. Ernst lived in the United States until 1953, spending much of his time in Arizona, painting strange landscapes. After 1953 he returned to Europe, painting and exhibiting, and continuing his personal life in a quieter vein, with his wife, Dorothea Tanning, an American painter. In 1954 at the Venice Biennale, Ernst was awarded one of the art world's top honors for painting. Ernst died in 1976. Since his death, major retrospectives exhibitions celebrating his artistic achievements have toured both Europe and the United States.

Further Reading

Ernst wrote a short, fanciful account of his life ("to a young friend") which is in the New York Museum of Modern Art publication, Max Ernst, edited by William S. Lieberman (1961). Ernst also wrote poetically on his ideas on art in Beyond Painting (1948), which includes interesting essays by his friends. Ernst's work is remembered in Werner Spies, editor, Max Ernst: A Retrospective, te Neues Publishing Company, 1995; and William Camfield's Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism, te Neues Publishing Company, 1995. A solid account of Ernst is John Russell, Max Ernst: Life and Work (1967). □

Ernst, Max (b Brühl, nr. Cologne, 2 Apr. 1891; d Paris, 1 Apr. 1976). German-born painter, printmaker, collagist, and sculptor who became an American citizen in 1948 and a French citizen in 1958, one of the major figures of Dada and even more so of Surrealism. He studied philosophy and psychology at Bonn University, but he became fascinated by the art of psychotics (he visited the insane as part of his studies) and neglected academic work for painting. After serving in the First World War he became with Arp (his lifelong friend) the leader of the Dada movement in Cologne. In 1920 he organized one of Dada's most famous exhibitions in the conservatory of a restaurant there: visitors entered through the lavatories, and axes were provided so they could smash the exhibits if they felt so inclined.

In 1922 Ernst settled in Paris, where he joined the Surrealist movement on its formation in 1924. Even before then, however, he had painted works that are regarded as Surrealist masterpieces, such as Celebes (1921, Tate, London), in which an elephant is transformed into a strange mechanistic monster. The irrational and whimsical imagery seen here, in part inspired by childhood memories, occurs also in his highly original collages. In them he rearranged parts of banal engravings from sources such as trade catalogues and technical journals to create strange and startling scenes, showing, for example, a child with a severed head in her lap where a doll might be expected. He also arranged series of such illustrations with accompanying captions to form ‘collage novels’; the best known and most ambitious is Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness), published in Paris in 1934. Another imaginative technique of which he was a leading exponent was frottage, which he invented in 1925. In 1930 he appeared in the Surrealist film L'Âge d'or, created by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and in 1935 he made his first sculpture (he worked seriously but intermittently in this field, characteristically creating totemic-like figures in bronze).

In 1938 Ernst broke with the Surrealist movement, but this did not affect his work stylistically. He was interned for a short while after the German invasion of France and in 1941 moved to New York, remaining in America until 1953 (apart from a visit to France in 1949). While in the USA he collaborated with Breton and Duchamp in the Surrealist periodical VVV. He settled permanently in France in 1953 and in his late years acquired many honours, including the main painting prize at the Venice Biennale in 1954. His painting of this time became more lyrical and abstract.

Ernst was married four times. His third (very brief) marriage was to Peggy Guggenheim; his fourth wife (married 1946) was Dorothea Tanning (1910– ), one of the outstanding American Surrealist painters. In the late 1930s he lived in Paris with the British-born (later Mexican) Surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington (1917– ). His son Jimmy Ernst (1920–84) was also a painter.

Ernst, Max (1891–1976). German-born painter, printmaker, collagist, and sculptor who became an American citizen in 1948 and a French citizen in 1958, one of the major figures of Dada and even more so of Surrealism. He studied philosophy and psychology at Bonn University, but he became fascinated by the art of psychotics (he visited the insane as part of his studies) and neglected academic work for painting. After serving in the First World War he became with Arp (his lifelong friend) the leader of the Dada movement in Cologne. In 1920 he organized one of Dada's most famous exhibitions in the conservatory of a restaurant there: visitors entered through the lavatories, and axes were provided so they could smash the exhibits if they felt so inclined. In 1922 Ernst settled in Paris, where he joined the Surrealist movement on its formation in 1924. Even before then, however, he had painted works that are regarded as Surrealist masterpieces, such as Celebes (1921, Tate, London), in which an elephant is transposed into a strange mechanistic monster. The irrational and whimsical imagery seen here, in part inspired by childhood memories, occurs also in his highly original collages. In them he rearranged parts of banal engravings from sources such as trade catalogues and technical journals to create strange and startling scenes, showing, for example, a child with a severed head in her lap where a doll might be expected. He also arranged series of such illustrations with accompanying captions to form ‘collage novels’; the best-known and most ambitious is Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness), published in Paris in 1934. Another imaginative technique of which he was a leading exponent was frottage, which he invented in 1925. In 1930 he appeared in the Surrealist film L'Âge d'or, created by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and in 1935 he made his first sculpture (he worked seriously but intermittently in this field, characteristically creating totemic-like figures in bronze).

In 1938 Ernst broke with the Surrealist movement, but this did not affect his work stylistically. He was interned for a short while after the German invasion of France and in 1941 moved to New York, remaining in America until 1953 (apart from a visit to France in 1949). While in the USA he collaborated with Breton and Duchamp in the Surrealist periodical VVV. He settled permanently in France in 1953 and in his late years acquired many honours, including the main painting prize at the Venice Biennale in 1954. His painting of this time became more lyrical and abstract. Ernst was married four times. His third (very brief) marriage was to Peggy Guggenheim; his fourth wife (married 1946) was Dorothea Tanning (1910– ), one of the outstanding American Surrealist painters. In the late 1930s he lived in Paris with the British-born (later Mexican) Surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington (1917– ). His son Jimmy Ernst (1920–84) was also a painter.

Max Ernst 1891-1976, German painter. After World War I, Ernst joined the Dada movement in Paris and then became a founder of surrealism . Apart from the medium of collage , for which he is well known, Ernst developed other devices to express his fantastic vision. In frottage he rubbed black chalk on paper held against various materials such as leaves, wood, and fabrics to achieve bizarre effects. He was also the author of several volumes of collage novels. A note of whimsy often characterizes his dreamlike landscapes while other works reveal an allegorical imagination. Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale and several other works are in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Bibliography: See his Beyond Painting (1948); studies by J. Russell (1967) and U. M. Schneede (1973); R. Rainwater, Max Ernst, Beyond Surrealism: An Exhibition of the Artist's Books and Prints (1986); W. A. Camfield, ed., Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism (1993); W. Spies, ed., Max Ernst: A Retrospective (2005).

Ernst, Max (1891–1976) German painter and sculptor, founder of Cologne Dada (1919), later influential in surrealism. Ernst was a prolific innovator and developed ways of adapting collage, photomontage and other radical pictorial techniques. His most important works include L'Eléphant Célèbes (1921) and Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale (1924). Ernst left the surrealist movement in 1938 and lived in New York (1941–48), where he collaborated on the periodical VVV with André Breton and Marcel Duchamp.

http://si.edu/collection; http://www.tate.org.uk; http://www.guggenheimcollection.org