Max Ernst

In 1918, Max Ernst married Luise Straus, who was a student of art history and later became a well known journalist. The couple had a son named Hans-Ulrich Ernst, who later moved to the United States and changed his name to Jimmy Ernst. Jimmy was also a well-known artist.

Max and Luise did not stay together for long. In 1922, Ernst left behind his wife and son and moved to France. Later, he divorced Luise and settled permanently in Paris. Here he went into a ménage à trois or threesome relationship with his friend Paul Éluard and his wife Gala

In 1927, Ernst married Marie-Berthe Aurenche. The couple separated in 1937 and later divorced. It is said that this relationship inspired Ernst to create many paintings of erotic nature. The couple did not have any children.

Max Ernst was born on April 2, 1891, in Brühl, near Cologne in Germany to Philip and Luise Ernest. The couple had nine children out of which, Max was born third.

Himself hard of hearing, Philip Ernst earned his living by teaching the deaf. At the same time, he was an amateur painter and spent a lot of time sketching and painting. Max got the inspiration to paint from his father.

In 1909, Max enrolled at the University of Bonn. Here he studied a varied range of subjects like philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, literature, and art history. From now on, he also began to take up painting and sketching seriously.

As a student of psychiatry, Max often visited mental asylum. The inmates there fascinated the artist in him. He also found pleasure in visiting the castle in Brühl and making sketches in its garden. However, until now he like his father was an amateur artist, and drew only for pleasure.

Things began to change in 1911, when Max befriended August Macke and influenced by him, he joined Die Rheinischen Expressionisten, an artists’ group founded by Macke. Soon, Max had a change of heart and decided to become a professional artist.

Max returned to Cologne after being demobilized in 1918. In 1919, he went to Munich and visited Paul Klee. Under him, he studied the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who founded the scuola metafisica art movement and had a profound influence on the surrealism.

This is also the year, when Max Ernst took up nihilistic art movement called Dada and created his first collage. Along with Johannes Theodor Baargeld, he also established a Dada group at Cologne. Hans Arp, who had by now become a close friend, also joined the group.

In 1919 and 1920, Ernst published a number of magazines, none of which survived for long. In addition, he also organized a number of Dada exhibitions. His photomontage ‘Here Everything Is Still Floating’ was created in 1920.

in 1921, Ernst met French poet André Breton and Paul Éluard. Ernst and Éluard became lifelong friend. In the same year Éluard bought Ernst’s paintings and collages to illustrate his poetry book, Répétitions.

Later in 1922, the two friends collaborated to bring out a book of poems and collages called ‘Les malheurs des immortels’. According to many critics, it is one of the best examples of authentic collaboration of surrealist works. Later, he also collaborated with André Breton.

In 1925, inspired by an ancient wooden floor in which the grains had been accentuated by many years of rubbing, Max Ernst invented a new art form called frottage. The word comes from frotter, meaning to rub. In this art form, the artist rubs a pencil or any other drawing tools on an uneven surface. The resulting drawing is either left as it is or used as a basis of other paintings.

In 1926, Ernst co invented another technique called grattage. In this technique, wet paint is scrapped off from the canvas so as to reveal imprints of objects placed beneath the canvas. His ‘Forest and Dove’, created in 1927, is a fine example of this technique.