Max Ernst Germany, 1891-1976

The German artist Max Ernst was a pioneering figure of the Dada and Surrealist movements, celebrated for his innovative techniques and dreamlike imagery that challenged conventional notions of art and reality. Through painting, collage, sculpture, and printmaking, Ernst explored the irrational, the subconscious, and the fantastical, often combining scientific curiosity with poetic invention.

Ernst was born on April 2, 1891, in Brühl, Germany. He initially studied philosophy and art history at the University of Bonn before turning to art full-time. His early work was influenced by German Expressionism, but after serving in World War I—a traumatic experience that deeply impacted his worldview—Ernst became a founding member of the Dada movement in Cologne, embracing absurdity and chance as creative strategies.

In the early 1920s, Ernst moved to Paris, where he became a central figure in the emerging Surrealist circle led by André Breton. He developed experimental techniques such as frottage (rubbing) and grattage (scraping), which allowed him to uncover unexpected forms and textures suggestive of dream states and unconscious associations. His collage novel Une Semaine de Bonté (1934) remains a landmark of Surrealist art, combining Victorian engravings into haunting, uncanny narratives.

Ernst’s restless imagination led him to constant reinvention. During the 1930s and 1940s, he lived between Europe and the United States, forming important relationships with artists like Peggy Guggenheim (his patron and briefly his wife) and Dorothea Tanning, his lifelong partner. His sculptural works and large-scale paintings from this period reflect a fascination with myth, alchemy, and nature, often rendered with technical precision and surreal ambiguity.

Ernst was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and has been honored with major retrospectives at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1961), the Tate Modern, London (1991), and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. His work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Menil Collection. Ernst’s legacy endures in the boundary-pushing spirit of contemporary art, where innovation and imagination remain inseparable.