Knowra Max Ernst Max Ernst Max Ernst (1891–1976) was a German-born painter, sculptor, and poet who helped shape Dada and Surrealism through collage and experimental image-making techniques.
Surrealism : An artistic and literary movement that sought to release imagination from rational control, often through dreams and unexpected juxtapositions. Ernst became one of Surrealism’s defining artists, adapting its experiments into painting and collage.
Grattage : A painting technique in which paint is scraped from a canvas laid over a textured surface. Ernst used grattage to reveal accidental textures that could suggest landscapes and creatures.
André Breton : A French writer and poet who founded Surrealism and authored its principal manifestos. Breton championed Surrealism, the movement in which Ernst became a central visual artist.
The Elephant Celebes : A 1921 painting by Max Ernst featuring a monumental, machine-like creature in a barren landscape. Its unsettling hybrid figure demonstrates Ernst’s transformation of found forms into Surrealist imagery.
Automatism : A creative practice that seeks to bypass conscious control through spontaneous writing, drawing, or other actions. Ernst’s chance-based procedures gave visual form to Surrealist interest in unconscious production.
Dada : An avant-garde movement that rejected conventional artistic and social values through absurdity, chance, and provocation. Ernst’s early Cologne work used Dada’s anti-establishment spirit and collage methods.
Decalcomania : A technique that transfers paint between surfaces by pressing them together and separating them. Ernst exploited unpredictable paint patterns as prompts for imaginative forms.
Hans Arp : An Alsatian artist and poet associated with Dada and abstract art. Arp collaborated with Ernst in the Cologne Dada circle and shared his interest in chance.
A Week of Kindness : A 1934 collage novel by Max Ernst assembled from Victorian engravings. Its sequential image-collages show how Ernst built narratives by altering existing illustrations.
Surrealist sculpture : Sculpture associated with Surrealism that uses unexpected forms, transformations, and dreamlike combinations. Ernst carried Surrealist metamorphosis beyond painting into objects and three-dimensional forms.
Show all 27