Max Ernst

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