| Max
Ernst was born at Bruhl, near Cologne, the son of Philipp Ernst,
teacher of the deaf and amateur painter, and his wife, Luise nee
Kopp. Ernst taught himself to paint while studying philosophy and
psychiatry at the University of Bonn (1909-1914) and exhibited his
painting at the first German Autumn Salon in 1913. In 1914 Ernst
became acquainted with the Surrealist painter, Jean Arp, and they
began a lifelong friendship.
In 1916 Ernst was drafted into the German
military to fight in WW1. After the war Ernst settled in Cologne and
together with Arp and Johannes Baargeld founded the Cologne Dada group.
Their exhibition of 1920 at the Winter
Brewery in
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Cologne was closed
by the police on the grounds
of obscenity. Ernst exhibited with the Paris Dada group and moved
to Paris in 1922. In Paris Ernst became a member of the Surrealist
group and a friend of Gala and Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara, and Andre
Breton.
Their exhibition of 1920 at the Winter
Brewery in Cologne was closed by the police on the grounds of obscenity.
Ernst exhibited with the Paris Dada group and moved to Paris in 1922.
In Paris Ernst became a member of the Surrealist group and a friend
of Gala and Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara, and Andre Breton.
During
his early years of artmaking, Ernst made collages out of school textbooks,
mail order catalogs, magazines, and educational pamphlets. He was
able to be political and personal in his collage work, impressing
Andre Breton with the possibilities of collage and the vision of
Surrealism. In Beyond Painting he describes the task he set out for
himself in the collage work, 'I am tempted to see in collage the
exploitation of the chance meeting of two remote realities on an
unfamiliar plane'cultivating the effects of a systematic bewilderment'
coupling two apparently uncoupleable realities on a plane apparently
unsuitable to them.' Ernst's early collages were examples of what
Surrealism could mean and were inspirational to the Surrealist movement.
In
1921 Ernst began to combine assemblage and collage in large-scale
painting with enigmatic plots such as Oedipus Rex, 1922, Teetering
Woman 1923, and Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924.
In 1924 Ernst traveled to Indochina with Gala and Paul Eluard.
Ernst
invented what was called the frottage, pencil rubbings on paper or
canvas, in the early 1920s. Ernst made a series of frottage works
and published the 'Histoire Naturelle.' The frottage realizes the
surrealistic principle of psychological automatism.
Ernst
showed 48 works at the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition
in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Ernst met the Surrealist
artist Leonora Carrington and lived with her until 1940 when Ernst
was arrested by the Nazis. Separated from Ernst, Carrington fled
to Spain in an effort to procure a visa for Ernst in Madrid and meanwhile
suffered a mental breakdown. Released from prison camp, Ernst found
a new love interest in Peggy Guggenheim, the wealthy American sponsor
of the arts. Guggenheim arranged for Ernst's escape from France and
passage to America.
Ernst lived in New York from 1941-1945. In 1942
he met the Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning and in 1946 married
and moved with Tanning to Arizona. Ernst became an American citizen
in 1948. In 1953 he received the Grand Prize at the Venice Bienalle.
He moved to France in 1958 and lived there until his death at the
age of 85.
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