Max Ernst signed and numbered lithograph

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Max Ernst
Max Ernst signed and numbered lithograph

About the Item

Max Ernst (German, 1891 – 1976) Veilleuse au Seuil de Nos Terrassements Dent Prompte VI Colour lithograph Signed and numbered in pencil ‘15/70 Max Ernst’ (lower edge) 25.3/4 x 22 in. (65.3 x 56 cm.) (including frame) This is a very simple and yet beautifully constructed composition by one of the world’s most famous artists. Having reframed the work in wood it is a very clean and fresh image for fitting very well into modern living. Max Ernst was born on April 2, 1891, in Brühl, Germany. He enrolled in the University at Bonn in 1909 to study philosophy, but soon abandoned this pursuit to concentrate on art. At this time he was interested in psychology and the art of the mentally ill. In 1911 Ernst became a friend of August Macke and joined the Rheinische Expressionisten group in Bonn. Ernst showed for the first time in 1912 at the Galerie Feldman in Cologne. At the Sonderbund exhibition of that year in Cologne he saw the work of Paul Cézanne, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. In 1913 he met Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay and traveled to Paris. Ernst participated that same year in the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon. In 1914 he met Jean Arp, who was to become a lifelong friend. Despite military service throughout World War I, Ernst was able to continue painting and to exhibit in Berlin at Der Sturm in 1916. He returned to Cologne in 1918. The next year he produced his first collages and founded the short-lived Cologne Dada movement with Johannes Theodor Baargeld; they were joined by Arp and others. In 1921 Ernst exhibited for the first time in Paris, at the Galerie au Sans Pareil. He was involved in Surrealist activities in the early 1920s with Paul Eluard and André Breton. In 1925 Ernst executed his first frottages; a series of frottages was published in his book Histoire naturelle in 1926. He collaborated with Joan Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev that same year. The first of his collage-novels, La Femme 100 têtes, was published in 1929. The following year the artist collaborated with Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel on the film L'Age d'or. His first American show was held at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, in 1932. In 1936 Ernst was represented in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1939 he was interned in France as an enemy alien. Two years later Ernst fled to the United States with Peggy Guggenheim, whom he married early in 1942. After their divorce he married Dorothea Tanning and in 1953 resettled in France. Ernst received the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and in 1975 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum gave him a major retrospective, which traveled in modified form to the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in 1975. He died on April 1, 1976, in Paris.

Creator:
Max Ernst (1891-1976, American, German, French)
Dimensions:
Height: 25.75 in (65.41 cm)Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
Medium:
Lithograph
Movement & Style:
Surrealist
Period:
20th Century
Condition:
In good overall condition, a few minor creases. Recently remounted behind glass in a limed wood frame.
Gallery Location:
Petworth, GB
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU54035438531

Shop All Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Born in Germany in 1891, later naturalized as an American, then a French citizen, Max Ernst was a pioneer in the Dada and Surrealist movements, the boundaries of which he pushed with his unconventional methods of printmaking, drawing and collage.

Ernst had no formal art training — and that may have been his greatest asset. He produced his first work following four years serving in World War I. At the time, he was in Cologne, Germany, working closely with fellow Dada pioneers Jean Arp and Johannes Baargeld. His output during this period consisted largely of collages, which allowed him to represent the shards, rubble and explosions from his traumatic wartime experience.

In 1922, Ernst moved to France, where he soon became affiliated with Surrealism, the avant-garde art movement taking shape in Paris. Alongside Man Ray, Joan Miró and a couple of others, Ernst was among the first visual artists to experiment with imagery and techniques associated with Surrealism.

Ernst’s greatest contribution to the Surrealist movement was his invention of frottage (French for “rubbing”), wherein an artist rubs a pencil or crayon over a paper atop a textured surface, and later grattage (French for “scraping”), where a similar technique is applied with paint. Both methods showcase Ernst’s fascination with the unconscious and serendipitous elements of artistic creation, a theme that connected the Dadaists and the Surrealists. Ernst had deep knowledge of psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud’s dream theories, which were big influences on Surrealists. He was among the first Surrealists to use Freud’s work to examine his own creative impulses. He also published a series of books of his collages, all of which were deeply symbolic and often philosophical.

When Germany occupied France during World War II, Ernst escaped to America with the help of patron and collector Peggy Guggenheim, whom he married in 1941. While living in New York, Ernst’s work and techniques proved instrumental in inspiring the early development of Abstract Expressionism — influencing Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock in particular. He later moved to Sedona, Arizona, where he lived with his fourth wife, Dorothea Tanning, a fellow Surrealist and prolific visual artist and poet.

While Ernst and Tanning are largely responsible for Sedona’s reputation as an artist colony, they relocated to France in the 1950s and remained until Ernst’s death in Paris in 1976.

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