***March 2009*** |
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Max Ernst
April 2, 1891 – April 1, 1976 |
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Ernst was born in Brühl, Germany, near Cologne in 1891. In 1909, at the age of eighteen, he enrolled in the University at Bonn to study philosophy but soon abandoned the courses to persue his love of art. He began painting that year, but never received any formal artistic training. During World War I he served in the German army, which was not only a momentous interruption in his career as an artist, but it left him disturbed by the images of war and man’s inhumanity to man. He stated in his autobiography, "Max Ernst died the 1st of August, 1914."
After the war, filled with new ideas, Ernst, fellow artist Jean Arp and social activist Alfred Grünwald formed the Germany Dada in Cologne group. In 1918 he married the art historian Luise Straus—a stormy relationship that was not destined to last long. |
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In 1919 Ernst visited Paul Klee and with Klee’s influence created paintings, block prints, collages and experimented with mixed media.
The couple had a son, Jimmy, who was born in 1920, who followed in his father’s footsteps and became an artist as well. (Luise died in Auschwitz in 1944).
In 1922, he joined fellow Dadaists André Breton and Paul Éluard at the artistic community of Montparnasse.Constantly experimenting, in 1925 he invented a graphic art technique called ‘frottage’, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images.
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He also created another technique called 'grattage’ in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath.
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The next year he collaborated with Joan Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered ‘grattage’ in which he troweled pigment from his canvases. He also explored with the technique of decalcomania which involves pressing paint between two surfaces.
Ernst developed a fascination with birds that was prevalent in his work. He developed an alter ego in paintings, which he called ‘Loplop’ that was a bird. He suggested this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans. He said that one night when he was young he woke up and found that his beloved bird had died, and a few minutes later his father announced that his sister was born. |
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Ernst drew a great deal of controversy with his 1926 painting “The Virgin Chastises the infant Jesus before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter.” which helped to gain himself notoriety in the artworld.
In 1927 he re-married Marie-Berthe Aurenche, and it is thought his relationship with her may have inspired the erotic subject matter of The Kiss and other works of this year. In 1930, he appeared in the film L'Âge d'or directed by self-identifying Surrealist Luis Buñuel. Ernst began to make sculpture in 1934, and spent time working with Alberto Giacometti. In 1938, the American heiress and artistic patron Peggy Guggenheim acquired a number of Max Ernst's works which she displayed in her new museum in London. |
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In 1938 he was interned in Camp des Milles, near Aix-en-Provence, along with fellow surrealist, Hans Bellmer, who had recently emigrated to Paris on the outbreak of World War II. Thanks to the intercession of Paul Éluard, and other friends including the journalist Varian Fry, he was discharged a few weeks later. Soon after the Nazi occupation of France, he was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo, but managed to escape and flee to America with the help of Guggenheim.He left behind his lover, Leonora Carrington, and she suffered a major mental breakdown. Ernst and Guggenheim arrived in the United States in 1941 and were married the following year. Along with other artists and friends (Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall) who had fled from the war as well and lived in New York City, Ernst helped inspire the development of Abstract Expressionism. |
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His marriage to Guggenheim did not last however, and in October of 1946 in Beverly Hills, California, in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet P. Browner, he married Dorothea Tanning. The couple first made their home in Sedona, Arizona. In 1948 Ernst wrote the treatise Beyond Painting. As a result of the publicity that this provided, he finally began to achieve financial success at the age of fifty-seven.
In 1953 he and Tanning moved to a small town in the south of France where he continued to work. The City, and the Galeries Nationales du Grand-Palais in Paris published a complete catalogue of his works.
In 1966 he created a chessgame made of glass which he named "Immortel"; it has been described as, “a masterpiece of bewitching magic, worthy of a Maya palace or the residence of a Pharaon.” |
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Ernst died on 1 April 1976, 1 day before his birthday, in Paris.He was interred at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
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