Biographical/Historical Note
Max Ernst, a leading Dada and Surrealist artist, was born in Brühl, Germany on April 2, 1891. He co-founded the Cologne branch of the Dada movement in 1919 with Johannes Baargeld ("Johnny Money" née Alfred Grünewald) and mounted the first Dada exhibition in Cologne that same year. His interest in technical and technological experimentation in all mediums is perhaps most evident in his graphic work. Ernst had little formal instruction in the arts, other than from his father, a self-taught amateur artist. Ernst chose instead to study philosophy and art history at the University of Bonn, beginning in 1910 until his enlistment in the army in August, 1914. In his graphic work, following a small series of linoleum cuts from 1912 and a recently discovered (1985) woodcut from 1917, he entirely abandoned traditional relief printing, the preferred medium of the Expressionists, in favor of intaglio and planographic methods. These methods enabled him to employ collage elements through the use of transfer and photographic technologies in combination with the more traditional techniques.
Ernst's collages differed in several respects from those of the Cubists, whose aims were tied to a formalist aesthetic, as well as from the more politically charged work of Berlin Dada artists such as John Heartfield and Richard Huelsenbeck. Ernst sought to conceal the collage origins of his images by reproducing them photomechanically. He used black-and-white wood engravings reproduced in magazine and catalog illustrations, carefully trimming each image to produce a tightly integrated overall effect. This method emphasized the primary importance of the contradictory qualities of the juxtaposed images over formal considerations, in keeping with the basic tenets of Surrealism spelled out by its foremost apologist, Andre Breton.
In 1941 Ernst arrived in the United States. In 1946 he married Dorothea Tanning in a double marriage ceremony with Juliet and Man Ray in Beverly Hills. He became a citizen of the U.S. in 1948. He returned permanently to live in Europe in 1953 and became a citizen of France in 1958. The overwhelming majority of Ernst's prints date to the last twenty-five years of his life, when he associated with a small number of master printers, primarily in Paris. He died there on April 1, 1976.
From the guide to the Ernst O. E. Fischer collection of Max Ernst prints, 1912-1974, (Getty Research Institute)
