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Max Ernst. unknown author

Top 10 Interesting Facts About Max Ernst

What is Max Ernst famous for?

Max Ernst was a German by birth, naturalized American in 1948, and French in 1958).  He is profoundly known as a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet.

 A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism and has been described by many as one of the most beloved artists of the 20^th century.

1. Much of Ernst鈥檚 Work is Influenced By The Strictness of His Father

Max Ernst (1891-1976) grew up in the heavily forested region near Cologne in Germany in what he described as 鈥榓 banal and almost happy childhood. There were a few jolts. The lasting traces which they left can be seen in my work.鈥�

We are told that Ernst was not particularly fond of his father who was a disciplinarian, and teacher and had an affinity for academics, thereby transferring to his son the classical and traditional painting techniques.

Later on in life, he decided to defy tradition and authority. both in his work and in the choices that he made in the real world. This feeling was exhibited in the art he made as well as the creation of the Dada and Surrealism movements which were rebellious.

2. He Moved to New York As a Result of Disillusionment in World War One

New York City. Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

He was an artilleryman during World War I. He was disillusioned after the events of world war I. On top of his disobedience to authority brought on by experiences with his father, his time in the military shaped his affinity for Surrealism even more.

 He decided to go and live in New York City as a refugee during World War II, fleeing from Nazi police and continuing with his art in America. Interestingly, two of his paintings were included in Hitler鈥檚 Degenerate Art exhibition which was put on by the Nazi government to expose the public to the 鈥渁rt of decay.鈥�

3. Ernst Was Deeply Interested In Psychology and Mental Illness After Reading The Work Of Sigmund Freud

 Ernst studied psychology at Bonn University, where he read the work of Sigmund Freud.  Freud鈥檚 descriptions of dreams enabled Ernst to take pictures of the unconscious without having to go into a hypnotic trance.

 Owing to his great knowledge of Freud, his paintings are sometimes interpreted as dark caverns of repressed sexual urges. Ernst was interested in the idea that religion was the result of deep-rooted neuroses.

In the creation of the Surrealism movement, Ernst used Freud鈥檚 dream theories. Essentially, Surrealism was a way to use art in capturing the subconscious. He developed techniques to adequately capture subconscious desires such as pressing two surfaces together or rubbing one surface across another and using the 鈥渁ccidental鈥� elements that formed.

He also used automatism which is a sort of stream of consciousness approach to art.

4. Ernst Had An Obsession With Birds 

Painting of birds. Photo by McGill Library on

He often rationalized his fixation with birds by recalling a strange experience he had had as a teenager. In 1906 the artist鈥檚 pet parrot died the same night his sister was born. He said, 鈥榯he incident developed serious confusion between birds and humans that became encrusted in my mind鈥�.

He continued to write, 鈥業 was visited nearly every day by the Bird Superior named Loplop, an extraordinary phantom of model fidelity who attached himself to my person. He presented me with a heart in a cage, two petals, three leaves, a flower, and a girl.鈥�

5. The Artist Used The Forest As a Symbol of Discovery As Well As The Mysterious Recesses of the Human Mind

Ernst once recalled how childhood excursions with his father into the great Rhineland forests near his home in Br眉hl had filled him with terror and ecstasy. This led him to begin a series of richly painted works that explored these sensations in 1927.

Dreamlike images of birds and trees connect Ernst鈥檚 paintings to the earlier German Romantic tradition.  Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) once wrote that looking at the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was like seeing the world 鈥榳ith cut eyelids鈥�. Ernst鈥檚 paintings are similarly unnerving.

6. Ernst Is Often Described As 鈥楾he Complete Surrealist鈥� 

Ernst experimented with many different techniques, including collage, frottage, grattage, oscillation, dripping, and decalcomania. He reinvented his artistic techniques constantly from the mid-1910s until he died in 1976. He also turned out to be the most exquisite colorist.

His 1925 painting of a flock of birds converging in a cloud of paint, above, is an early example of grattage (scraping), in which paint is scraped off the canvas to allow the texture and color of the surface underneath to show through.

 Even as an enemy alien in France during the Second World War, Ernst found ways to make art by using decalcomania, a technique in which paint is squashed between two pieces of paper and peeled back to reveal a textural surface.

7. His Paintings Were Also A Rebellion Against Brutality And Stupidity

In an interview with the British artist Roland Penrose (1900-1984), Ernst declared that art history was made by madmen. It was the Surrealist鈥檚 way of dealing with the irrationality and collective insanity of Fascism.

He never engaged explicitly with politics, but towards the end of the 1930s, he began to express himself in his paintings. The threat of impending war impelled him to create works that were a scream of rage against brutality and stupidity.

8. Ernst Had a Succession Of Relationships With Beautiful And Powerful Women

His first wife was the German academic Luise Straus, who left him after he became embroiled in a torturous love triangle with Paul Eluard (1895-1952) and his wife Gala (1894-1982), who later married Salvador Dal铆.

In 1927 he eloped with the troubled painter Marie Berthe Aurenche (1905-1960) and then abandoned her for the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). In 1941 Ernst escaped to America with the help of the art collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979), who became his third wife 鈥� until he met the artist Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) the following year at an art gallery in New York. He was to remain with Tanning until he died in 1976.

9. Ernst Inspired Jackson Pollock鈥檚 Drip Paintings

While living on Long Island in the 1940s, Ernst started playing around with a technique called 鈥榦scillation鈥�, which involved splashing paint through a hole in the bottom of a can suspended by a piece of string.

The sweeping curves and drips of paint looked like planets in orbit, and encouraged the Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) to carry out similar experiments, which later became known as 鈥楢ction painting鈥�.

10. Ernst Compared The Process Of Painting To That Of Writing A Poem

Ernst created his category of art: with the textures of his surfaces, his restless experimentation, and the complexity of the work he produced. He was like no other painter. Ultimately, his works evoke, with gentle anguish, the brutality and exhilarating madness of the times he lived through.