Max Ernst (France) 1891-

ARTIST PROFILE



German-born French artist, who was a seminal figure in both Dada and surrealism. He was noted for an extraordinary range of techniques, styles, and media.


Ernst was born in Br?hl. He enrolled at the University of Bonn in 1909, where he studied philosophy and psychiatry. During World War I (1914-1918) he served in the German army. The Dadaist movement had already begun in Switzerland by the time Ernst left the army. Attracted by the Dadaists' revolt against convention, Ernst settled in Cologne and began to work in collage. In 1922 he moved to Paris. There he turned to surrealism, painting pictures in which solemn humans and fantastic creatures inhabit precisely detailed Renaissance landscapes. In 1925 he invented frottage (pencil rubbings of objects); later he experimented with grattage (the scraping or troweling of pigment from a canvas). After the invasion of France in World War II (1939-1945) Ernst was imprisoned; in the prison camp he worked with decalcomania, a technique of transferring pictures from specially prepared paper to glass or metal. He immigrated to the United States in 1941 with the help of the heiress Peggy Guggenheim, who became his third wife in 1942. Ernst returned to France in 1953. Thereafter his works were highly prized.


Throughout his remarkably varied career, Ernst was known for being a tireless experimenter. In all his work he sought the ideal means of conveying in two or three dimensions the extradimensional world of dreams and the imagination.



"Ernst, Max," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

RELATED EXHIBITIONS
London : Major Surealist Exhibition at Tate Modern

ARTIST WORKS

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WORK DETAILS
Title: Celebes
Medium: 1921, dimensions 130?109cm, Oil on canvas
Exhibited at: Tate Modern
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Europe after the Rain
Title: Europe after the Rain
Medium: 1942, dimensions 54?147cm, Oil on canvas
Exhibited at: Wadsworth Atheneum
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Of This Men Shall Know Nothing
Title: Of This Men Shall Know Nothing
Medium: 1923, dimensions 81?64cm, Oil on canvas
Exhibited at: Tate Modern
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The Clothing of the Bride
Title: The Clothing of the Bride
Medium: 1940, dimensions 130?96cm, Oil on canvas
Exhibited at: Peggy Guggenheim Collection
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The Teetering Woman
Title: The Teetering Woman
Medium: 1923, dimensions 130?97cm, Oil on canvas
Exhibited at: Nordheim Westfalen Kunstsammlung
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The Whole City
Title: The Whole City
Medium: 1935, dimensions 60?81cm, Oil on canvas
Exhibited at: Kunsthaus Zurich
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