Ernst, Max

Early years

Born into a catholic family. Father - Philip Ernst, was a teacher at a school for deaf and dumb children and an amateur artist. Mother - Louise Ernst, nee. Kopp. The family had nine children. Max be the third child. He had a brother Carl and sisters Emily, Louise, Elizabeth and Apollonia. The fifth sister, Maria, died at the age of six.

Max Ernst began to draw early, having received the first lessons from his father. From childhood, he was very impressionable and had a rich imagination. One of his first memories was a trip to the forest with his father. The boy was struck by the magnificence of nature: "[...] a great pleasure to breathe fully in the middle of a large space and at the same time an anxious feeling to be caught in a cage from the trees around ^[5] ." As a child, he spent a lot of time in nature and subsequently often returned in his works to the theme of forest and flora. In 1906 , on the night the younger sister of Ernst, Apollonia, was born, his beloved parrot died. The simultaneity of these two events struck the teenager, he was sure that the child born took away a vital spark from the bird. This event left a big imprint on the artist’s work, he repeatedly portrayed people in the form of birds ^[6] .

In 1897 - 1908 he attended elementary school and high school in his native Bruhl. A great influence was exerted on him by the book of the German philosopher Max Stirner, " The One and Only His Property, " which he read in the last year of his studies at the Lyceum. She made him think, among other things, of the bourgeois principles of instruction ^[7] . In 1909 he entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bonn in order to please his parents, who predicted his career as a teacher. Specializing in psychology , he attended classes at the Bonn Psychiatric Hospital. He paid great attention to the paintings and sculptures of the residents of the hospital and even wanted to write a book about the art of the mentally ill ^[8] .

During his studies in Bonn, Ernst joined the Young Rhineland group, which consisted of artists, writers and poets. He was friends with the poet , artists August Macke , , Heinrich Kampendonk , psychologist . In his biographical notes, Max Ernst wrote about his university years: “A teenager with a thirst for knowledge avoids any type of knowledge that can lead to earnings. On the contrary, he indulges in occupations regarded by his professors as empty, of which the most important is painting ^[9] . ” In his free time, he painted a lot: portraits, landscapes, caricatures. However, he soon felt a lack of theoretical knowledge and began to attend university lectures on art. He enriched self-study by visiting museums and exhibitions. Ernst finally established himself in the decision to become an artist, going to the exposition of artists of the Paris school ( Gauguin , Van Gogh , Cezanne and Picasso ) held in Cologne . Since then, lectures on philosophy have served only as a screen for receiving financial assistance from parents ^[10] .

In 1912, he sent several works to small exhibitions in Bonn and Cologne and wrote several articles in the journal Der Volksmund, in which he defended the ideals of Young Rhineland. In them, he scoffed at art critics who operated on the concepts of “craftsmanship” and “taste” to evaluate art ^[11] . In the summer of the following year, his works were presented at the exhibition of the Rhine Expressionists in Bonn, and in September at the first German Autumn Salon in Berlin .

In 1913, August Macke introduced him to Robert Delaunay and Apollinaire . Then he made a trip to Paris. In 1914, in Cologne, Ernst met with Hans Arp , a long friendship ensued. In World War I, Max Ernst served in the German army. In 1915 he was promoted to foreman. The recoil of the gun injured his head and right arm, and the lieutenant sympathizing with him transferred him to cartographers, where Ernst had the opportunity to draw. In January of the following year, an exhibition of two artists took place at the Sturm Gallery in Berlin: Max Ernst and Georg Mucha . In the spring of 1918 he was promoted to lieutenant, and in October, shortly before the end of the war, he married art historian Louise Strauss, whom he met in 1914 ^[12] . Two years later, they had a son, later known in the USA as Jimmy Ernst , a surrealist artist. The marriage, however, soon broke up.

Dada in Cologne

After demobilization, Ernst returned to Cologne. In 1919, the artist met , and - in Munich - with Paul Klee . At the same time, Max Ernst saw reproductions of metaphysical paintings by Giorgio de Chirico in the Italian journal Valori Plastici , impressed, he released an album of eight lithographs Fiat modes - pereat ars. He also illustrated a collection of poems by Johann Kulemann . When he caught the eye of the 391 magazines by Francis Picabia and Dada by Tristan Tzar , he became interested in this new movement, born in Zurich in 1916 . Hans Arp wrote to him from Zurich about the scandals that arose after the performances of the Dadaists . After reading Ttsary’s “Dada Manifesto,” Ernst felt that the spirit of this movement was closer to his temperament than the spirit of the poems of the “Young Rhineland”, and that he was ready to become an active member of the Dada group ^[13] .

He began to experiment with various materials, collage techniques. For Ernst, the collage was one way of reacting to the world situation in 1919: “I tried to see in it [the collage] the development of an accidental meeting of two distant realities on an inappropriate plan (this is to summarize and rephrase the famous phrase of Lotreamon :“ It is beautiful as an accidental meeting on an anatomical the table of the umbrella and the sewing machine “[...]” ^[14] ). Ernst, like his colleagues in the shop, gave his works intricate names - from descriptions to absurd verses in German and French. It has also become a tradition to take on a new thematic name: Dadamaks Ernst, Minimaks Dadamaks, etc.

In November 1919, Ernst and Baargeld organized a Dadaist exhibition, in which, in addition to the works of the organizers and their friend Otto Freindlich , the works of amateur artists and residents of psychiatric hospitals are presented. Posters and catalogs of the exhibition were confiscated by the occupying British authorities. Hans Arp, who came to Cologne, joined the creative duo at the beginning of next year. In April 1920, an exhibition entitled “The Early Spring of Dada” ( German: Dada-Vorfrühling ) followed in the pub “Winter”, which caused aggression among the public - furious visitors demanded to remove objects that disturb public order ^[15] . The day after the scandal, the artist received a telegram from his father, in which he renounced him. This was the final break with the family, Ernst never saw his father again ^[16] .

The exhibitions caused a stir, information about them reached Paris , Zurich and New York , an active exchange of letters, texts, works began. Soon the artist received a letter from Andre Breton with a proposal to hold a solo exhibition in Paris and, flattered, answered with consent. The exhibition opened in May 1921 , the opening was accompanied by a large representation of the Dadaists, the catalog came out with a preface by Breton. Max Ernst himself could not come, he was not given a French visa. The exhibition had a great response, notes about it appeared in many magazines, it was visited by various representatives of the Parisian intelligentsia, but it did not bring any personal benefit to the artist ^[17] .

A warm welcome to his work among Dada friends gave Ernst the idea that his place among them was in Paris. Ernst and his wife spent the summer of 1921 in Tarrents , where they met with Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Sophie Toiber . Ernst even finally managed to personally see Andre Breton, who was on a honeymoon with Simone. However, due to the end of the visa, the couple were forced to leave at the end of September and missed Paul Eluard and Gala . In September, under the editorship of Tzar, Arp, and Ernst, a special issue of Dada magazine was published under the heading Dada in the Open Air, directed against the attacks of Francis Picabia ^[18] .

Meeting with the Eluards, moving to Paris

In late autumn 1921, the couple of Eluards visited the artist in Cologne. The meeting was significant. Ernst made a strong friendship with Eluard, and Gala posed for him. Eluard bought the artist’s most finished painting, Celebes Elephant , and selected a dozen collages to illustrate his collection of Repetitions ( French Répétitions ). As soon as the collection was published in March 1922 , the poet decided to personally hand over a copy to Ernst. They met in Dusseldorf. In a postcard sent from where to Tristan Tzara, Ernst wrote that Eluard “is his friend and half”, and Eluard - that he is no longer the only son ^[19] . Their spiritual kinship was continued in a new joint project: composing poems in prose based on Ernst's collages. They sent each other letters with corrections until they came to an option that suited both. The result was a small book, The Misfortunes of the Immortals ( French: Les malheurs des immortels ), which was published in small print in Tarrenz, where Ernst and Eluard and their wives spent the summer. Most of the time the artist remained in the Villa Eluard, Gala became his mistress, and became involved with ménage à trois ^[20] .

At the end of the summer, Ernst accompanied his wife and son to Cologne and went to Paris. For lack of a French visa, he used the passport of Paul Eluard ^[21] . Ernst did not immediately part with his wife, Louise and her son visited him several times ^[22] . A year and a half, the artist lived at the Eluards in Saint-Brice , then in Obonne , arriving by train to Montparnasse in the morning. In Paris, an illegal immigrant from Germany had a hard time, he was interrupted by casual earnings.

At the end of 1922, impressed by the long-awaited reunion with friends of the Dadaists, he painted the “ Meeting of Friends ” ( French: Au rendez-vous des amis ). In 1923, exhibited at the Salon of Independents . His works did not attract the attention of critics ^[23] , but received warm reviews from cubists Georges Braque , Juan Gris and Louis Marcoussis ^[24] . In the same salon, the Beautiful Gardener was exhibited ( French: La belle jardinière ), bought a year later by the Düsseldorf Exhibition Center , from where it was removed at the request of the Nazi authorities. In 1937, the artist saw his picture in a photograph of an exhibition of degenerative art ; it was most likely destroyed ^[25] . Following a tip from André Breton, collector Jacques Duchet acquired the painting “ Inner Look ” ( Fr. A l'intérieur de la vue ) ^[26] . Despite the help of friends, neither success nor fame came to the artist.

Things in the love triangle worsened, and in March 1924, Paul Eluard suddenly left for Monaco , and then to Vietnam . To raise money for the trip, Ernst sold his paintings at modest prices to gallery owner Johann Hey . Gala sold the collection collected by her husband. Fundraising took three months ^[27] . They met in Singapore , then spent a couple of weeks together in Saigon . In the end, Gala stayed with Paul, they returned to Paris in September. Ernst traveled for several months in Southeast Asia. Upon returning to Paris, the artist received a contract from Jacques Violet and in 1925 rented the studio in Montmartre (22, rue Tourlaque). The contract, however, ended in June with the mysterious disappearance of Vio ^[28] .

French period

The artist spent his vacations in Pornic , on the Brittany coast. There, when examining the old parquet, he came up with the idea of frotting technique, transferring various textures, which allows capturing involuntary images and resembling the “ automatic letter ” of surrealists . The following year, at the publishing house of Jeanne Boucher, he released a collection of drawings "Natural History" ( FR. Histoire Naturelle ) in this technique, the opening address was written by Hans Arp. In 1926, the first major exposition was held in Paris at the Van Lier Gallery. Instead of a preface, poems by Paul Eluard, Benjamin Pere and Robert Desnos were printed in the catalog.

In 1926, together with Miro, he designed the performance “ Romeo and Juliet ” for the troupe of Sergey Diaghilev . Work with Russian ballets provoked indignation among his like-minded surrealists , especially Breton, who made a scandal at the ballet premiere. In the next issue of the Surrealist Revolution , Breton and Aragon published a short article criticizing Ernst and Miro, which "belittle the idea of ​​surrealism" ^[29] . However, already in the next issue, two works by Ernst with an apologetic commentary by Paul Eluard were presented.

January 1927, the artist spent in Megeve , where he created several works in the new scratching technique. Exhibitions followed by van Lear in Paris and at the Schwarzenberg Gallery in Brussels. In the same year, Max Ernst married , they rented a house in Medon . In 1929, the graphic novel “A Woman with 100 Heads” was published: about one hundred and fifty drawings with textual accompaniment by the artist and an address to the reader by Andre Breton. One of the characters in the book was Loplop, the main among the birds, who repeatedly appeared in Ernst's works. The following year, he released his second collage novel, Rêve d'une petite fille qui voulut entrer au carmel. In the same year, the artist starred in Bunuel ’s film “The Golden Age ” (later Bunuel shot him in the film “ Simeon the Desert ”, 1965 ).

In 1931, Ernst's first personal exhibition was held in New York, in the gallery of Julien Levy , who acquired part of the collages exhibited in Paris in the same year in the Pierre Gallery. In 1934 , another novel collage, Une semaine de bonté, was released. Ernst spent the summer of 1934 and 1935 in Malye with a family of sculptors Giacometti , turned to sculpture. In 1936 he participated in the exhibition "Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism" at the New York Museum of Modern Art and at a large exhibition of surrealists in London. In the same year, Oscar Dominguez introduced a new method - decalcomania (“decals”), which Ernst began to use in oil painting.

In 1937, Ernst's text Au-delà de la peinture, dedicated to his work from 1918 to 1936, was published in a special issue of the journal Notebooks of Art ( French: Cahiers d'art ). He also performed the decoration of Alfred Jarry ’s play, Ubu Enchaîné , directed by Sylvain Itkin . In the same year, Ernst visited Roland Penrose in London, where he met with Leonora Carrington , who was impressed by the artist’s paintings she saw a year ago at an exhibition of surrealists. Passion flared up between them, and Leonora followed Ernst to Paris. The artist left his wife and lived with Leonora for several years. He bought a house in Saint-Martin-d'Ardes and made many frescoes and sculptures there. In 1938, Peggy Guggenheim bought a significant part of Ernst's works and exhibited them in her museum in London .

During the war years

In 1939 , with the outbreak of World War II , Ernst was arrested as a subject of the enemy country. He spent six weeks at the pretrial detention center in Largentier , followed by Leonora Carrington. He was then transferred to the internment camp at Le Mill ( Aix-en-Provence ), housed in a brick factory. There he shared a room with the artist Hans Bellmer , who painted a portrait of Max Ernst, whose face was painted in the form of a brick wall. At the end of the year he was released with the help of the Minister of the Interior, Albert Sarro , who was attracted by Paul Eluard.

In May of the following year, the artist was again sent to Le Mill on a denunciation by a local resident who accused Ernst of giving the artist light signals to the enemy side. As the German army approached, those internment camps that were in mortal danger in case of occupation were put on a train heading south, and Max Ernst was on it. After numerous stops and conflicting instructions from the authorities, the prisoners were placed in the camp of Saint-Nicolas near Nimes . Ernst twice escaped from the camp, before in July received permission to release due to marriage to a French citizen, Maria Berta (the fact of a divorce with which he concealed with the consent of the latter).

Returning home to Saint-Martin, he discovered the house sold and the absence of Leonora, who had a nervous breakdown after his arrest, and her friend took her to Spain. At that time, the artist lived thanks to the help of a friend Joé Busquet , who bought his paintings. At that time he began to write the second version of the painting "Europe after the Rain."

His position was fragile, and Ernst decided to leave Europe. His son Jimmy, who lives in New York , suggested that he emigrate to the United States . The director of the New York Museum of Modern Art Alfred Barr received documents for Ernst asylum in the United States. In December 1940, the artist arrived in Marseille , where Varian Fry handed him the necessary papers. There he met Andre Breton, who was awaiting departure, and met the American gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim . She acquired a dozen works from Ernst and, carried away by him, decided to help with her departure to America. Ernst left Marseilles for Madrid . At the border there were problems with documents, but the customs officers admired the paintings let the artist pass. The last refuge was Lisbon , where Ernst spent several weeks waiting for a place on the plane.

In the USA

On July 14, 1941, Max Ernst flew to the United States and was detained at the airport as a German citizen, but was released three days later with the help of Peggy Guggenheim. Peggy's plans have long been the opening of a museum of modern art, and she was looking for a suitable place for him. Together with his daughter, Max Ernst and his son Jimmy, they traveled around America. They finally returned to New York in December, and soon Max and Peggy got married.

In New York, Ernst met Andre Breton and other representatives of the art world who fled from the war to America - Andre Masson , Jacques Lipschitz , Fernand Leger , Pete Mondrian and others. He spoke closely with Marc Chagall and Marcel Duchamp , who lived with him for the first time after arriving in New York.

Max Ernst influenced the formation of abstract expressionism in American painting. An example of his technique of controlled automatism inspired artists Robert Motherwell and William Baziotis , his sculptures gave impetus to the work of . At the same time, the artist began to practice a new technique, which he called oscillation and described as follows: “Tie an empty tin can on a rope a meter or two long, make a hole in the bottom, fill it with thinner paint and swing it [...] over a lying canvas” ^{[ 30]} . The first such painting was “Abstract Art, Concrete Art”, later turned into “The Head of a Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly”. This painting later attracted the attention of Jackson Pollock , who asked Ernst how he created it. Pollock became interested in this technique, which he modified and himself dubbed the term drip painting (dripping, spraying, pouring technique).

In March 1942, an exhibition of the thirty last Ernst paintings in the Valentine Gallery was held, which, however, did not have much success, only one painting was sold. In April of the same year, the issue of the magazine “ ” was dedicated to the artist. In June, the first issue of the surrealist magazine “ ”, published by David Heir, came out with a cover depicting insect designs and geometric figures by Max Ernst. The artist, along with Andre Breton, were listed as advisers for the publication of the magazine. In October, the exhibition "First Papers of Surrealism" opened. Her catalog was made in the form of a list of modern myths, among which "interplanetary communication" was presented as the prerogative of Max Ernst ^[31] . In the same month, the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery "Art of this Century" was opened on 57th Street. Ernst drew the cover for the catalog.

At the end of 1942, when selecting paintings for the exhibition of women artists in the Peggy Gallery, Ernst drew attention to one of them - Dorothea Tuning 's “Birthday”. Julien Levy introduced him to the artist; several meetings were enough for him to fall in love. In the summer of 1943, they spent several months at a ranch in Sedona ( Arizona ), where they could stay inexpensively and enjoy beautiful landscapes. While Dorothea was going to divorce her husband, Ernst wrote “Vox Angelica” - a large picture, divided into many compartments representing different subjects. It was a kind of summary of his techniques and topics. If we count all the cells in the picture (even empty ones and serving as separators), then we get 52, that was how many years the artist was in 1943. On the same year, when he arrived in New York, he officially divorced Peggy Guggenheim.

In 1944, German artist and cinematographer Hans Richter , whom Ernst met in Cologne in 1920, invited him to participate in the creation of the film “ ”. Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray , Fernand Leger and Alexander Calder also participated in the project. The film consisted of six parts, one for each. The episode created by Ernst, Desire is an erotic dream with an idea similar to Une semaine de bonté . He wrote dialogues for him and played the role of president.

The summer of 1944, the couple spent in the Great River ( Long Island ). Ernst turned the garage into an atelier and created sculptures from acaju wood and plaster . He also continued to work in the technique of decalcomania , creating the paintings “Rhine Night” and “Eye of Silence”. Soon, the artist again began to experiment with style, the period of “natural forms” began. Moving away from strict, emotionless constructions, from pure abstraction, he turned to flexible forms inspired by nature.

In 1946, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tuning traveled to Hollywood , where they wanted to get married. Witnesses they asked to be Man Ray and his girlfriend Juliet Browner. They also decided to get married, and as a result, a double wedding was played.

In the same year, Ernst took part in a competition organized by the film company Loew-Levin. Eleven artists, among whom were Salvador Dali and Paul Delvaux , invited to write a picture about the temptation of St. Anthony , which was supposed to appear in the film " ". The jury chose a painting by Max Ernst, the artist received a cash prize of $ 2,500. With the money raised, a plot of land near Sedona with a view of the mountains of the Grand Canyon was bought and the construction of workshops and a house was started, which took a long time due to lack of funds. The place was very secluded, away from a small town. The artist himself built a house, a young admirer of his work helped him. From empty bottles, springs and cement, Max Ernst made a 2.4-meter sculpture "Capricorn", which is a seated bull man, and next to it is a sculpture of a woman with a fish tail and a crane neck. The property became known as Capricorn Hill.

Spouses traveled around Arizona, were interested in the culture and rituals of local Native American tribes, attended the performances of Kachin dancers. Max Ernst bought various items and masks from them. They were occasionally visited by friends. Visited by four artists in 1946 and 1947, described their life in an article in “Max Ernst in Arizona”: “We slept on folding canvas beds, went for water [...] for thirty meters, used oil for lighting , and when it was cool, we warmed up with bourbon - we did not stop singing and laughing ^[32] . ”

Good news came to Sedona from Europe: Andre Breton, who returned to Paris, organized an exhibition of surrealists in 1947 . For its holding, the gallery was turned into a sanctuary for initiation following the example of the Eleusinian Mysteries . Max Ernst actively participated in the preparation of the exhibition at a distance. He created the painting “Black Lake (a source of alarm)”, made color lithographs for the catalog and sent several paintings already written.

In 1948 he published a large essay, “On the Other Side of Painting”.

Recent years in Europe

In 1950 he returned to France. In 1952 he was admitted to the clownish College of Pathophysics . Settled in Paris, participated in the 1954 Venice Biennale . In 1963 he moved to the south-east of France, in the Provencal town of Seyyan (Dep. Var ). In 1975, Ernst's large retrospective exhibition was launched at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York and at the Grand Palais National Gallery in Paris.

He was buried in the Paris cemetery of Pere Lachaise .

In 2005, the Ernst Museum was opened in his hometown of Bruhl .

• Werner Spies. Max Ernst, vie et œuvre. - Paris: Éditions du Center Pompidou, 2007 .-- S. 352. - ISBN 978-2-84426-341-4 .
• Alexandrian Max Ernst. - Paris: Somogy éd. d'art, 1992. - S. 224. - ISBN 2-85056-203-3 .
• Patrick Waldberg, Michel Sanouillet, Robert Lebel Dada et Surréalisme // Rive-Gauche Productions, Paris 1981 - ISBN 2-86535-022-3
• Robert McNab Ghost Ships: A Surrealist Love Triangle, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2004 - ISBN 978-0-300104-31-8

• Max Ernst - life and work / ed. by Werner Spies. Köln: DuMont-Literatur-und-Kunst-Verl., 2005
• Max Ernst - plastische Werke / Jürgen Pech (Hrsg.). Köln: DuMont-Literatur-und-Kunst-Verl., 2005
• Max Ernst, die Urschrift der Natur: graphische Werke aus der Sammlung Harald Loebermann / Andrea Wandschneider (Hrsg.). Bönen: Kettler, 2006
• Sprengel macht Ernst: die Sammlung Max Ernst / Ulrich Krempel (Hrsg.). Hannover: Sprengel-Museum, 2006
• Max Ernst, Lithographien - Lewis Carolls Wunderhorn / Renate Goretzki, Josef Sauerborn (Hrsg.). Köln: Bildungswerk der Erzdiözese, 2006
• Schnabelmax und Nachtigall: Texte und Bilder / Hrsg. von Pierre Gallissaires. Hamburg: Ed. Nautilus, 2006
• Dil G. Max Ernst. M .: Slovo, 1995
• Max Ernst: Graphics and books. Lufthansa Collection. M .: 1995
• Bischoff W. Max Ernst. M .: Art Rodnik; Taschen, 2005.

• Ernst's works in museums around the world
• Biography (German)
• Biography, work on line
• Ernst Documentary (German)
• Ernst Museum site in Bruhl
• Genius without a diploma (Russian)
• Forest series of paintings by Max Ernst , analysis
• Ernst, Max on the Internet Movie Database
• Lecture by Irina Kulik at the Garage Museum. Max Ernst - Rebecca Horn. Art machines