Max Ernst— The Dadaist & the Surrealist

Maximilian Maria Ernst, popularly known as Max Ernst, is a German painter, sculptor, founder member of the two revolutionizing painting movement— Dadaism and Surrealism was born on April 2, 1891 in Brule, Germany and died on April 1, 1976 in Paris, France.  The German painter and sculptor, Max Ernst, was always drawn to everything peculiar and psychological. He emerged as one of the leading advocates of irrationality in art and he also was an originator of the Automatism movement of Surrealism. By the 1948, he became a citizen of the United States and a decade after in 1958 he earned the citizenship of France. What made him a genius in his art and one of a kind painter was his early leanings towards psychology and philosophy. He was a student of Psychiatry and philosophy but he soon abandoned his studies to follow his heart’s desire, to paint and create art. He was studying in the University of Bonn before he decided to pursue his dreams of becoming a painter. Max Ernst’s paintings draw the audience towards the extraordinary, towards the subconscious of the psyche. His works are available online. Explore the brilliance and be mesmerized by the radiance of this radioactive stride of Max Ernst. Buy Max Ernst paintings online.

Max Ernst served in the German army during World War I and after the experience of the gore and the reality check Max Ernst was converted into a Dada, which was an impactful nihilistic artistic movement of the era. He formed a group with several fellow Dada artists in Cologne.  The group was celebrated and some of the famous names; some of the change makers and creative minds joined them including Jean Arp, the artist poet. He was also an editor of journals. He triggered a scandal for staging a controversial Dada exhibit in a public restroom. His anarchic soul always preferred to stand out and never confirmed to the order of the worldly things. Probably this was the sole cause for him to prefer psychology or even to portray the odd reflections of reality through the prismatic mirrors of distortion.  He always had his fetish for making a statement with a sudden shock. His paintings speak for his thoughts and lineage. Max Ernst’s paintings are available online and they perfectly showcase the real politics behind his art. 

Max Ernst’s some of the most important works; however, were the Dada collages and photomontages that he had created. These include “Here Everything Is Still Floating” (1920), which depicts a startlingly illogical composition that he had created from the cutout photographs of different species of life forms including insects and fish and then he added some of his anatomical drawings in an ingenious match to arrange these cutouts in a format that would suggest the multiple identities of the things that he depicted. His Dadaist works marks his foray into the world of peculiar showcasing his inclinations into anything that has been termed ‘abnormal’. His works were investigations on the term normal and how his audiences feel about that. His view of Dadaism was partly a take on that and partly the repercussions of the First World War which he was made to witness on a firsthand account.

 

In 1922, Max Ernst moved to Paris and he continued his work there. After two years, in Paris, he emerged as a founding member of the sensationalized Surrealists movement and joined a group of artists and writers and his fellow men who followed the traces of psychology who devoted their thoughts to the unknown corners of mind. There works grew out of the fantasies that have evoked from the unconscious. They followed the unconscious mind and they came up with some of the utmost striking revolutionizing depictions that stimulate the mind as much as they bewilder it. Max Ernst began using techniques of Frottage in 1925 which is a process of pencil rubbings of things like wood grain, fabric, or leaves. During the same time he also became interested in decalcomania which was another practice of transferring paint from one surface to another and the technique was to press the two surfaces together. These two techniques have been able to create accidental patterns and textures and Max Ernst contemplated these to create some of his brilliant works.

He allowed free association to suggest images that he subsequently used in one of his series of drawings titled, “Histoire naturelle” that he created in 1926 as well as in many other paintings, such as “The Great Forest” (1927) and “The Temptation of St. Anthony” (1945) and such. He created these vast swamplike landscapes that have ultimately stemmed out of the tradition of nature mysticism popular among the German Romantics. Explore Max Ernst and check out his paintings online. If you are deep driven into his world buy Max Ernst’s paintings online.