Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller

Max Ernst
La Dame Ovale - Vintage Rare Book Illustrated by Max Ernst - 1934

1934

About the Item

La Dame Ovale is an original modern rare book written by Mary Leonora Carrington (Chorley, Lancashire 1917 – Mexico City, 2011) and illustrated by Max Ernst (1891 - 1976) in 1934. Original edition. Published by GLM, Paris. 535 numbered copies. Format: small 8°. Seven full page collages. Unnumbered pages. Good conditions. Max Ernst in 1934. Originally a Dada activist in Germany, Max Ernst (1891 - 1976) became one of the early adherents of the Surrealist circle. As a child living in a small community near Cologne, Ernst had considered his existence incredible and full of wonders. In autobiographical transcripts, written mostly in the third person, he said of his birth: “Max Ernst had his first contact with the world of sense on the 2nd April 1891 at 9:45 a.m., when he emerged from the egg which his mother had laid in an eagle’s nest and which the bird had incubated for seven years”. Ernst’s service in the German army during World War I swept away his early success as an Expressionist. In his own words: “Max Ernst died on 1st August 1914. He returned to life on 11th November 1918, a young man who wanted to become a magician and find the central myth of his age. From time to time he consulted the eagle which had guarded the egg of his prenatal existence. The bird’s advice can be detected in his work”. Mary Leonora Carrington (Chorley, Lancashire 1917 – Mexico City, 2011). Carrington was a British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s. In 1936 Leonora saw the work of the German surrealist Max Ernst at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London and was attracted to the Surrealist artist before she even met him. In 1937 Carrington met Ernst at a party held in London. The artists bonded and returned together to Paris, where Ernst promptly separated from his wife. In 1938 they left Paris and settled in Saint Martin d'Ardèche in southern France. The new couple collaborated and supported each other's artistic development. The two artists created sculptures of guardian animals (Ernst created his birds and Carrington created a plaster horse head) to decorate their home in Saint Martin d'Ardèche. In 1939 Carrington painted Portrait of Max Ernst as a capture of some ambivalences in their relationship. The portrait was not her first Surrealist work; between 1937–1938 Leonora painted Self-Portrait, also called The Inn of the Dawn Horse, now exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sporting white jodhpurs and a wild mane of hair, Carrington is perched on the edge of a chair in this curious, dreamlike scene, her hand outstretched toward a prancing hyena and her back to a tailless rocking horse flying behind her.
  • Creator:
    Max Ernst (1891-1976, American, German, French)
  • Creation Year:
    1934
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 7.45 in (18.9 cm)Width: 5.48 in (13.9 cm)Depth: 0.4 in (1 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Insurance may be requested by customers as additional service, contact us for more information.
  • Gallery Location:
    Roma, IT
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: M-1185611stDibs: LU65037993722
More From This SellerView All
  • Troyer - Rare Book Illustrated by Marc Chagall - 1922
    By Marc Chagall
    Located in Roma, IT
    Troyer is an original Modern Rare book written by David Hofstein (Korostyshiv, 1889 – Mosca, 1952) and illustrated by Marc Chagall (Lëzna, 1887 – Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1985) in 1922. ...
    Category

    1920s Surrealist More Art

    Materials

    Paper, Photogravure

  • Feu Central - Rare Book Illustrated by Yves Tanguy - 1947
    Located in Roma, IT
    Feu central is an original modern Artwork written by Benjamin Péret (Rezé, July 4, 1899 - Paris, September 18, 1959) and illustrated by Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 ...
    Category

    1940s Surrealist More Art

    Materials

    Paper, Photogravure

  • Chants de Maldoror - Rare Book Illustrated by René Magritte - 1948
    By René Magritte
    Located in Roma, IT
    Les Chants de Maldoror is an original modern rare book written by Comte de Lautréamont, pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (Montevideo, 1846 — Paris, 1870) and illustrated by René ...
    Category

    1940s Surrealist More Art

    Materials

    Paper, Photogravure

  • Suite Provinciale - Rare Book Illustrated by Marc Chagall - 1927
    By Marc Chagall
    Located in Roma, IT
    Suite Provinciale is an original Modern Rare book ritten by Gustave Coquiot (24 September 1865 – 6 June 1926) and illustrated by Marc Chagall (Lëzna, 1887 – Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 198...
    Category

    1920s Surrealist More Art

    Materials

    Paper, Photogravure

  • Rose des Vents - Rare Book Illustrated by Marc Chagall - 1920
    By Marc Chagall
    Located in Roma, IT
    Rose des Vents is an original Modern Rare book written by Philippe Soupault (Chaville, 1897 - Paris, 1990) and illustrated by Marc Chagall (Lëzna, 1887 – Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1985...
    Category

    1920s Surrealist More Art

    Materials

    Photogravure, Paper

  • Chants de Maldoror - Rare Book Illustrated by René Magritte - 1948
    By René Magritte
    Located in Roma, IT
    Les Chants de Maldoror is an original modern rare book written by Comte de Lautréamont, pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (Montevideo, 1846 — ...
    Category

    1940s Surrealist More Art

    Materials

    Photogravure, Paper

You May Also Like
  • Nineteen Famous People, Twenty-Two Friends, and Six Nudes
    By Mark Beard
    Located in New York, NY
    Handmade portfolio of 47 Polaroid transfer prints with accompanying text by Mark Beard, handwritten in pencil (Edition of 10 + 5 APs) Signed and numbered in pencil 15.75 x 11.75 x ...
    Category

    1990s Other Art Style Portrait Prints

    Materials

    Photogravure

  • Pickaxe (Spitzhacke) Superimposed on a Drawing of the Site by E.L. Grimm
    By Claes Oldenburg
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Pickaxe (Spitzhacke) Superimposed on a Drawing of the Site by E.L. Grimm, 1982 By Claes Oldenburg (Swedish, American, 1929-2022) Unframed: 26" x 20" Framed: 28.75" x 22.75" Signed and Dated Lower Right Whimsical sculpture of pop culture objects, many of them large and out-of-doors, is the signature work of Swedish-born Claes Oldenburg who became one of America's leading Pop Artists. He was born in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was a diplomat, and during Claes' childhood moved his family from Stockholm to a variety of locations including Chicago where the father was general consul of Sweden and where Oldenburg spent most of his childhood. He attended the Latin School of Chicago, and then Yale University where he studied literature and art history, graduating in 1950, the same year Claes became an American citizen. Returning to Chicago, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1952 to 1954 and also worked as a reporter at the City News Bureau. He opened his own studio, and in 1953, some of his satirical drawings were included in his first group show at the Club St. Elmo, Chicago. He also painted at the Oxbow School of Painting in Michigan. In 1956, he moved to New York where he drew and painted while working as a clerk in the art libraries of Cooper-Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration. Selling his first artworks during this time, he earned 25 dollars for five pieces. Oldenburg became friends with numerous artists including Jim Dine, Red Grooms and Allan Kaprow, who with his "Happenings" was especially influential on Oldenburg's interest in environmental art. Another growing interest was soft sculpture, and in 1957, he created a piece later titled Sausage, a free-hanging woman's stocking stuffed with newspaper. In 1959, he had his first one-man show, held at the Judson Gallery at Washington Square. He exhibited wood and newspaper sculpture and painted papier-mache objects. Some viewers of the exhibit commented how refreshing Oldenburg's pieces were in contrast to the Abstract Expressionism, a style which much dominated the art world. During this time, he was influenced by the whimsical work of French artist, Bernard Buffet, and he experimented with materials and images of the junk-filled streets of New York. In 1960, Oldenburg created his first Pop-Art Environments and Happenings in a mock store full of plaster objects. He also did Performances with a cast of colleagues including artists Lucas Samaras, Tom Wesselman, Carolee Schneemann, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Richard Artschwager, dealer Annina Nosei, critic Barbara Rose, and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer. His first wife (1960-1970) Pat Muschinski, who sewed many of his early soft sculptures, was a constant performer in his Happenings. This brash, often humorous, approach to art was at great odds with the prevailing sensibility that, by its nature, art dealt with "profound" expressions or ideas. In December 1961, he rented a store on Manhattan's Lower East Side to house "The Store," a month-long installation he had first presented at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. This installation was stocked with sculptures roughly in the form of consumer goods. Oldenburg moved to Los Angeles in 1963 "because it was the most opposite thing to New York I could think of". That same year, he conceived AUT OBO DYS, performed in the parking lot of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in December 1963. In 1965 he turned his attention to drawings and projects for imaginary outdoor monuments. Initially these monuments took the form of small collages such as a crayon image of a fat, fuzzy teddy bear looming over the grassy fields of New York's Central Park (1965) and Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London (1966). Oldenburg realized his first outdoor public monument in 1967; Placid Civic Monument took the form of a Conceptual performance/action behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, with a crew of gravediggers digging a 6-by-3-foot rectangular hole in the ground. Many of Oldenburg's large-scale sculptures of mundane objects elicited public ridicule before being embraced as whimsical, insightful, and fun additions to public outdoor art. From the early 1970s Oldenburg concentrated almost exclusively on public commissions. Between 1969 and 1977 Oldenburg had been in a relationship with Hannah Wilke, feminist artist, but in 1977 he married Coosje van Bruggen, a Dutch-American writer and art historian who became collaborator with him on his artwork. He had met her in 1970, when she curated an exhibition for him at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Their first collaboration came when Oldenburg was commissioned to rework Trowel I, a 1971 sculpture of an oversize garden tool, for the grounds of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands. Oldenburg has officially signed all the work he has done since 1981 with both his own name and van Bruggen's. In 1988, the two created the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota that remains a staple of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden as well as a classic image of the city. Typewriter Eraser...
    Category

    20th Century American Modern Mixed Media

    Materials

    Etching, Aquatint, Photogravure

  • Chroessi Schnell - "Schizophrenic Landscape" - surrealist landscape drawing
    Located in Winterswijk, NL
    Chroessi Schnell - "Schizophrenic Landscape". Surrealism, abstract forms, dream universe. It is an extended version of the Alienations of the maps of "Münsterland" where my mother ...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

    Materials

    Paper

  • Chroessi Schnell - "Surreal Maps" - surrealist abstract forms of a dream
    Located in Winterswijk, NL
    Chroessi Schnell - "Surreal Maps". Surrealism, abstract forms, dream universe. They are Alienations of the maps of "Münsterland" where my mother was born and grew up as a farmers d...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Surrealist Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

    Materials

    Paper

  • Voice of Treason
    By Morgan Jesse Lappin
    Located in Los Angeles, CA
    VoIce of Treason 12 x 12inches Collage on Paper Exhibition History: THE COLLAGE SHOW Morgan Jesse Lappin is a collage artist and curator based in Brooklyn. He seeks to explore the boundaries of collage, identify artists pushing the medium forward, and inspire others along the way. In 2013, he founded the Brooklyn Collage Collective, which consists of four core members: Morgan Jesse Lappin, Jessie Laura, Joseph Karwacki, and Michele Luger. The Brooklyn Collage Collective has worked and exhibited with other collage artists all over the world, including New York, London, Australia, and Italy. Lappin's art is a combination of comedy and chaos, with elements of music, vintage horror and sci-fi. His work ranges from seven-foot-long cartoon metropolises, to fictional album covers, to take-out Greek diner coffee cups embedded with video animations. I also use nostalgic material from my childhood in the ‘90s, such as VHS Tape...
    Category

    2010s Surrealist Mixed Media

    Materials

    Mixed Media, Magazine Paper

  • Exceptional set of complete works, dedicated, with 8 original endpage drawings
    By Jean Cocteau
    Located in Collonge Bellerive, Geneve, CH
    Jean Cocteau Exceptional copy of the complete works in 9 volumes, dedicated to Jacques Fonson, 8 with original endpage drawings Half bound in red morocco with gold lettering 8 volum...
    Category

    1940s Surrealist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Gold Leaf

Recently Viewed

View All