Max Ernst 1891-1976

Celebes 1921 Max Ernst 1891-1976 Purchased 1975 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T01988

Max Ernst

As my art teacher used to say, Max you’re too earnest. Or was it serious. Ernst was a serious artist. He left his wife and son and moved to Paris where he settled into  ménage à trois with the Éluards. I don’t know who the Eluards were but I’m sure they were wonderful people. The war started. When Ernst  wasn’t being chased around by the gestapo he did a lot of work. They chased him to America. The woman he left behind, Leonara Carrington, had a nervous break down. The woman who took him to America, Peggy Guggenheim, married him. But the marriage didn’t last long. He divorced Peggy and married Dorothea Tanning. He started to have success as an artist and stopped getting married.

 

Max Ernst

It is always fun and interesting to have a look at Ernst’s work. His use of story line in his collages has had a huge affect on both artists and writers. And the birds…

Max Ernst

As my art teacher used to say, Max you’re too earnest. Or was it serious. Ernst was a serious artist. He left his wife and son and moved to Paris where he settled into  ménage à trois with the Éluards. I don’t know who the Eluards were but I’m sure they were wonderful people. The war started. When Ernst  wasn’t being chased around by the gestapo he did a lot of work. They chased him to America. The woman he left behind, Leonara Carrington, had a nervous break down. The woman who took him to America, Peggy Guggenheim, married him. But the marriage didn’t last long. He divorced Peggy and married Dorothea Tanning. He started to have success as an artist and stopped getting married.

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Max Ernst

You can’t help running into Max Ernst’s work. For one thing, he has a fabulous name for a surrealist. And his work is always fascinating, fun, and unexpected.

I quote from the history of collage.

Max Ernst discovered the process of surreal collage in 1919, using Victorian engravings (many originally made from photographs), … “I was struck by the obsession which held under my gaze the pages of an illustrated catalogue … It was enough at that time to embellish these catalogue pages, in painting or drawing, and thereby … transformed into revealing dramas my most secret desires from what had been before only some banal pages of advertising.” Ernst credited Max Klinger (1857-1920), a Symbolist painter, as the inspiration for his collages. Many of Ernst’s collages might better be termed composites – because many strive for a seamless consistency.