Max Ernst was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. 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 textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, which left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.
Paintings by Max Ernst
The Elephant Celebes (1921)
The Elephant Celebes (or short Celebes) is a 1921 painting by the German Dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst. It is among the most famous of Ernst's early surrealist works and "undoubtedly the first masterpiece of Surrealist painting in the de Chirico tradition." It combines the vivid dreamlike atmosphere of Surrealism with the collage aspects of Dada.
Giorgio de Chirico was an inspiration for the early Surrealists, and Celebes' palette and spatial construction show his influence. The painting also attempts to apply Dada's collage effects to simulate different materials. Ernst's realistic portrayal of the constituent elements produces a hallucinatory effect that he associated with collage, and was trying to achieve in this painting. Regarding the art of collage, Ernst said, "It is the systematic exploitation of the coincidental or artificially provoked encounter of two or more unrelated realities on an apparently inappropriate plane and the spark of poetry created by the proximity of these realities."
The Hat Makes the Man (1920)
The Hat Makes the Man (1920) is a collage by the German dadaist/surrealist Max Ernst. It is composed of cut out images of hats from catalogues linked by gouache and pencil outlines to create abstract anthropomorphic figures. There are inscriptions in ink that read "seed-covered stacked-up man seedless waterformer ('edelformer') well fitting nervous system also tightly fitting nerves! (the hat makes the man) (style is the tailor)." The idea for this work began as a sculpture made from wooden hat molds.
Ernst was an important figure in the Dada movement, which often criticized the tastes of mainstream culture and depicted modern man as a conformist automaton.
Aquis Submersus (1919)
Aquis Submersus (Latin for Drowned in the Waters) is a painting by the German dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst created in 1919. Influenced by the Italian metaphysical art it is one of Ernst's earliest works showing surrealistic accents. It currently resides at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.
The painting depicts a swimming pool surrounded by buildings. The sense of dimension is unclear. The features of the buildings appear to be hand-drawn. The buildings leave shadows against the sky like a wall. Hanging in the sky is a clock that reflects on the water as a moon. In the pool, the picture shows a possibly female or childish body in an upside-down position with only the waist and legs above the water level. The person appears to be diving or is drowning. In the foreground is an armless statue-like figure that appears to have been made out of clay, throwing a shadow in the direction of the pool, similar to another shadow originating from outside the picture. The person looks away from the pool and bears a handlebar mustache resembling that of Ernst's father, but also has features which could be interpreted as female.
Napoleon in the Wilderness (1941)
Napoleon in the Wilderness is a 1941 surrealist painting by Max Ernst in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The figure in the foreground is Ernst's partner at that time, the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington.
Forest and Dove (1927)
Forest and Dove (1927) is a painting by the German surrealist Max Ernst. It depicts a nocturnal scene of a forest of bizarre, abstract trees. In the thick of the forest is a childlike depiction of a dove.
Both the forest and dove themes have appeared several times in Ernst's works. According to an analysis by the Tate Gallery in London the forest image represents the forest near Ernst's childhood home which inspired a sense of ‘enchantment and terror’ in the artist. The same analysis also states that the dove represents Ernst himself.
Pietà or Revolution by Night (1923)
Pietà or Revolution by Night (Pietà ou La révolution la nuit) (1923) is a painting by German surrealist and Dadaist Max Ernst. Since 1981 it has been part of the collection of the Tate Gallery in London.
The painting is interpreted as symbolic of the turbulent relationship between the artist and his father, as an amateur painter and staunch Catholic. In the painting, Ernst replaces the classic image of the Virgin Mary holding the crucified body of Jesus (pietà) with his father as Mary and the artist himself as Jesus. The expressions on both faces are blank as though in a state of sleepwalking.
Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (1919)
Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (Von minimax dadamax selbst konstruiertes maschinchen) (1919–20) is a mixed-media work of art by the German dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst.
It is probably the most famous example of a series of Ernst's works that were based on diagrams of scientific instruments. The work began by creating print reproductions of these diagrams. They were then colored and textured with a combination of watercolor, gouache and pencil and ink frottage. Frottage is a technique created by Ernst that involves creating rubbings of different textured surfaces like wood and textiles to give the work a three-dimensional appearance.
The Wood (Max Ernst) (1927)
Ernst was haunted by the atmosphere of forests and by the birds which inhabit them. Here, the herring-bone effect of the trees and the grainy sky reveal his technique of grattage. Layers of paint were applied to the canvas, which was pressed against a sheet of stamped metal and a rough plank and scraped. This work was given to the Contemporary Art Society by Miss A.F. Brown in 1940, and was acquired by the National Museum of Wales in 1991, where it is currently on display.
The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Ernst) (1945)
The Temptation of Saint Anthony is a 1945 painting by the German artist Max Ernst. It depicts the desert father Anthony the Great as he is tormented by demons in Egypt. The painting is located at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany.
The painting was made for the "Bel Ami International Art Competition", where 11 surrealist and magic realist painters were asked to submit a painting to be used in Albert Lewin's film The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, based on Guy de Maupassant's novel Bel Ami. The painting, which should be 36 × 48 inches and on the subject of the temptation of Saint Anthony, would be shown as the only colour segment in the otherwise black and white film. The invited artists were Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, Eugène Berman, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, O. Louis Guglielmi, Horace Pippin, Abraham Rattner, Stanley Spencer, and Dorothea Tanning. All contestants except Fini did deliver a painting. The judges of the competition were Marcel Duchamp, Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Sidney Janis.
The Barbarians (painting) (1937)
The Barbarians (French: Les Barbares) is a 1937 painting by German surrealist painter Max Ernst.
"Max Ernst's 1937 "The Barbarians" shows a bird-creature with a half-human, half-something. Are they battling? Commiserating? Whichever, they tower over the human below them."
Men Shall Know Nothing of This (1923)
Men Shall Know Nothing of This (German: Von diesem wissen Männer nichts) is oil on canvas painting by a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet Max Ernst. The painting was completed in 1923 in Paris, France. It is created in a Surrealism style by use of symbolic painting genre during First French period. The painting measures 81 by 64 centimeters and is now housed at Tate Liverpool.
The painting shares several features with Silberer's diagram: its landscape setting and low horizon; the gradation of the sky from light at the bottom to dark at the top; and the inclusion of the Sun and the Moon. Ernst replaced the cube of Primal Matter with a pile of entrails. Elsewhere Ernst also employed alchemical motifs, such as in this painting of the sexual conjunction of Sun and Moon.
The Eye of Silence (1943)
The Eye of Silence (French: L'oeil du silence), 1943–44, is a painting by German dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst.
For The Eye of Silence Max Ernst employed a technique called decalcomania to create arbitrary textures on the canvas, which he then reworked to resemble rock formations and forms of animals, plants, and architecture. The imagery on the surrealist canvas has been described as a primordial-like landscape, "in which rock-hard and gelatinous formations coexist under a forbidding sky." The Eye of Silence has also been described as, "part vegetation, part rock and part bejewelled baroque palace. A fusion of animal, mineral and vegetable, the painting's texture suggests bone, rag, feather and stone all at once, whilst the lake or chasm situated in its middle ground is carved out of a rock placed illogically against the sky…"