Max Ernst

A key member of first Dada and then Surrealism in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, Max Ernst used a variety of mediums—painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and various unconventional drawing methods—to give visual form to both personal memory and collective myth. By combining illusionistic technique with a cut-and-paste logic, he made the incredible believable, expressing disjunctions of the mind and shocks of societal upheavals with unsettling clarity.
After serving for four years in World War I, the German-born Ernst returned traumatized to Cologne (near his birthplace of Brühl) in 1918. It was there that he produced his first collages alongside fellow Dadaists Jean (Hans) Arp and Johannes Baargeld. In his works from this period, he used mechanically-reproduced fragments, such as the image of a chemical bomb being released from a military plane in the background of Here Everything is Still Floating, to reflect a world of rubble and shards.
Ernst is most closely associated with Surrealism, an artistic and literary movement in Paris in the 1920s that prized the irrational and the unconscious over order and reason. A key contribution to this movement was his invention of frottage, a technique of placing paper over a textured material, such as wood grain or metal mesh, and rubbing it with a pencil or crayon to achieve various effects. The Surrealists prized this practice—which produced compositions like Forest and Sun—for both the serendipity of the resulting imagery and the passivity it encouraged, bypassing the constraints of the artist’s rational mind. Having little control over the resulting patterns, Ernst marveled that he “came to assist as spectator at the birth of all my works.”1 Eventually, he translated the method from paper to painting, using the word grattage to describe this technique of scraping wet paint off of the canvas to achieve similar patterned effects.
The fragmented logic of collage, which Ernst referred to as “the culture of systematic displacement,” persists in his paintings, whose subjects are disjointed even if their surfaces are smooth. In these foreboding dreamscapes, headless bodies and body-less hands appear incongruously amid lush forests or on deserted beaches. In the years leading up to World War II, and during his time as an émigré to the United States from 1941 to 1953, Ernst made work that once again reflected the menacing atmosphere of war.
Introduction by Samantha Friedman, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, 2016
- Introduction
- Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. He is also noted for his novels consisting of collages.
- Wikidata
- Q154842
- Introduction
- Max Ernst was one of the most enthusiastic leaders of the Dada movement in Cologne, and later was closely associated with Surrealism. Ernst's Surrealist paintings are steeped in Freudian metaphor, private mythology, and childhood memories. One of his major themes centered on the image of the bird, which often incorporated human elements. He embraced the use of collage, frottage, and decalcomania in his diverse works, and published a series of purely pictorial novels created from collaged found images.
- Nationalities
- German, French
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Author, Collagist, Genre Artist, Graphic Artist, Painter, Owner, Sculptor
- Names
- Max Ernst, Maximilian Ernst, Ernest, Ernst
- Ulan
- 500115729
Exhibitions
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508: According to the Laws of Chance
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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517: Surrealist Objects
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Max Ernst: Beyond Painting
Sep 23, 2017–Jan 1, 2018
MoMA
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Mark Leckey: Containers and Their Drivers
Oct 23, 2016–Mar 5, 2017
MoMA PS1
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Dadaglobe Reconstructed
Jun 12–Sep 18, 2016
MoMA
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Max Ernst has
133 exhibitionsonline.
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Max Ernst, Jean (Hans) Arp Bulletin D 1919
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Max Ernst Helio Alcohodada 1919
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Jean (Hans) Arp, Max Ernst Die Schammade 1920
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Max Ernst Die Schammade 1920
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Max Ernst Die Schammade 1920
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Max Ernst The Little Tear Gland That Says Tic Tac (La Petite fistule lacrimale qui dit tic tac) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate VI from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate VIII from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate II from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate V from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate III from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate IV from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate I from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Plate VII from Let There Be Fashion, Down With Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Cover from Let There Be Fashion, Down with Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst Title page from Let There Be Fashion, Down with Art (Fiat modes pereat ars) 1920
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Max Ernst The Horse He's Sick (Un Peu malade le cheval) 1920
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Max Ernst The Hat Makes the Man (C'est le chapeau qui fait l'homme) 1920
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Max Ernst Hypertrophic Trophy (hypertrophie trophäe, trophée hypertrophique) 1920
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Max Ernst Farewell My Beautiful Land of Marie Laurencin (Adieu mon beau pays de Marie Laurencin) 1920
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Max Ernst Stratified Rocks, Nature's Gift of Gneiss Lava Iceland Moss 2 kinds of lungwort 2 kinds of ruptures of the perinaeum growths of the heart b) the same thing in a well-polished little box somewhat more expensive (schichtgestein naturgabe aus gneis lava isländisch moos 2 sorten lungenkraut 2 sorten dammriss/herzgewächse b) dasselbe in fein poliertem kästchen etwas teurer) 1920
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Max Ernst Here Everything Is Still Floating (Hier ist noch alles in der Schwebe) 1920
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Max Ernst The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses (La Biciclette graminée garnie de grelots les grisous grivelés et les échinodermes courbants l'échine pour quêter des caresses) 1921
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Max Ernst Repetitions (Répétitions) 1922
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Max Ernst Misfortunes of the Immortals (Les malheurs des immortels) 1922
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Max Ernst Woman, Old Man, and Flower (Weib, Greis und Blume) Paris 1923, Eaubonne 1924
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Max Ernst Au 125 du boulevard Saint-Germain 1923
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Max Ernst Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (Deux Enfants sont menacés par un rossignol) 1924
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Max Ernst Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst The Sea and Rain (La Mer et la pluie) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst A Glance (Un coup d'oeil) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Little Tables around the Earth (Petites tables autour de la terre) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Iceflower Shawl and Gulf Stream (Le Châle à fleurs givre) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Earthquake (Le Tremblement de terre) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst The Pampas (Les Pampas) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst He Will Fall Far from Here (Il tombera loin d'ici) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst False Positions (Les Fausses positions) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Confidences (Les Confidences) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst She Guards Her Secret (Elle garde son secret) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Whip Lashes or Lava Threads (Coups de fouet ou ficelles de lave) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Fields of Honor, Flood, Seismic Plants (Les Champs d'honneur, les inondations, les plantes sismiques) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Scarecrows (Les Épouvantails) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst The Chestnut Trees Take-Off (Le Start du châtaignier) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst Scars (Les Cicatrices) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst The Lime Tree Is Docile (Le Tilleul est docile) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst The Fascinating Cypress (Le Fascinant cyprès) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst The Habit of Leaves (Les Moeurs des feuilles) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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Max Ernst The Idol (L'Idole) from Natural History (Histoire naturelle) c. 1925, published 1926
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