Artist Birthday: Max Ernst

In 1925, Ernst pioneered the techniques of frottage (pencil rubbings on various textured surfaces or objects) and decalcomania (transferring paint from surface to another by pressing them together). His technical innovations led to accidental patterns, and tangible textures he would incorporate into his paintings. The Sea is actually less of an ode to subconscious imagery than it is an abstract investigation into the contradictions in the traditional nomenclature of art forms, sculpture or painting. The emphasis on texture definitely stems from his frottage experiments, and points towards the importance of sculpture in his body of work after the early 1930s.

Artist Birthday for April 2: Max Ernst (1891–1976, Germany)

Max Ernst was a key artist of the European Surrealism movement during the first half of the 1900s.

Max Ernst (1891–1976, Germany), The Sea, 1928. Paint and painted plaster on canvas, 56 x 47 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (MOMA-P2008erars)

The artists of Dada and Surrealism in the second decade of the 1900s basically rejected the world of "logic" and "reason" that they felt was responsible for the madness of that war.  These artists believed that an artist's imagination and dreams were as important or more important than what most people considered reality. This was in tune with German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844–1900) philosophy about the lyric significance of everyday objects and the superiority of a free spirit. The Dada movement of ca. 1919–1922 sought to redefine what could be considered valid subject matter in art. The nonrational was preferred to the logical.

By 1922, some artists accused Dada of becoming institutionalized of codified. Surrealism had its beginnings in these rebels. According to André Breton (1896–1976) who wrote the Surrealist manifesto in 1924, the Surrealism movement was pure "psychic automatism", art created by intuition rather than by conscious thought. Surrealists created art based on fantasy, dreams, and random thoughts, all unfettered by any traditional aesthetics, reason, or morals.

Max Ernst enrolled in the University in Bonn in 1909 intending to study philosophy, but abandoned  the idea and concentrated on art. At the time he was interested in psychology and the art of the neurodivergent. His early paintings were very much in the Expressionist mode, with brush work and brilliant color very similar to Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and August Macke (1887–1914). In 1911 he became a founding member of the Rhineland Expressionists group in Bonn. He was influenced by the "metaphysical" paintings of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) who was in Germany 1905-1909. He was drawn to the idea of dream imagery.

Serving as a conscripted artillery person in World War I, he was yet another artist who turned against the established art world. Ernst mined his early traumatic childhood experiences with those from the war to start producing absurd and apocryphal imagery. Meeting the avant-garde sculptor/painter Jean Arp (1886–1966) in Cologne in 1919, Ernst co-founded the short-lived Cologne Dada group. He produced his first collages at the time.

Through Arp he established close ties with the Dadaists in Paris. In 1922 he moved to Paris where he would live until 1941. He became one of the founding members of the Surrealist group after the 1924 publication of Breton's First Surrealist Manifesto. On top of exploring the possibilities of autonomism and dream imagery, Ernst also investigated hypnosis and hallucinogenic drugs.