Max Ernst

Biography
1891 - 1976

About the artist

Max Ernst, in full Maximilian Maria Ernst (April 2, 1891, Brühl, Germany—April 1, 1976, Paris, France), was a German painter and sculptor who was one of the important artists of the surrealist movement in Paris.

He went to the University at Bonn in 1909 to study philosophy. He soon abandoned this pursuit to concentrate on art. In this period 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. His work was exhibited for the first time in 1912 at the Galerie Feldman in Cologne. At the Sonderbund exhibition of that year in Cologne he was introduced the work of Paul Cézanne, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. In 1913 he met Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay and visited Paris. In the same year Ernst participated in the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon.

In 1914 he got to know Jean Arp, who was to become a lifelong friend. During World War I Ernst continued to paint and his work was shown in Berlin at Der Sturm in 1916. After returning to Cologne in 1918, he produced his first collages and founded the Cologne Dada movement with Johannes Theodor Baargeld. In 1921 Ernst exhibited in Paris, at the Galerie au Sans Pareil. He began associating with the Surrealists in the early 1920s.

In 1925 Ernst executed his first frottages; which were published in his book Histoire naturelle in 1926. The first of his celebrated collage-novels, La Femme 100 Têtes, was published in 1929. The next year Max Ernst collaborated with Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel on the film L’ Age d’or. He exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery for the first time in 1932.

In 1936 his work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. When he was interned as an enemy alien, 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.

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