Max Ernst

1891–1976

In Tate St Ives

Modern Art and St Ives: Paris, London and St Ives 1920–1940

In Tate Liverpool

Dora Maar

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Biography

Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. He is also noted for his novels consisting of collages.

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Artworks

Left Right

Max Ernst Celebes

1921
Max Ernst Forest and Dove

1927
Max Ernst The Entire City

1934

On display at Tate St Ives part of Modern Art and St Ives
Max Ernst Men Shall Know Nothing of This

1923

On display at Tate Liverpool part of Constellations
Max Ernst Pietà or Revolution by Night

1923
Max Ernst Dangerous Correspondances

1947
Max Ernst Dadaville

c.1924
Max Ernst Moon in a Bottle

1955

See all 10

Features

Left Right

Tate Etc

Between terror and ecstasy: Artistic hallucination

Jean-François Chevrier

Stories of hallucinations in art and literature date back to the Bible, but the idea of the artistic hallucination is …
Art Term

Automatism

In art, automatism refers to creating art without conscious thought, accessing material from the unconscious mind as part of the …
Art Term

Frottage

Frottage is a surrealist and ‘automatic’ method of creative production that involves creating a rubbing of a textured surface using …
Art Term

Decalcomania

Decalcomania is a blotting process whereby paint is squeezed between two surfaces to create a mirror image
Art Term

Surrealism

A twentieth-century literary, philosophical and artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the irrational, the poetic and …
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Joanna Moorhead on discovering Leonora Carrington

Mike Pinnington

We caught up with Leonora Carrington’s cousin, journalist Joanna Moorhead, to discuss how she learned about her ‘artist’s model’ relative …
Tate Papers

August Sander and the Artists: Locating the Subjects of New Objectivity

Dorothy C. Rowe

Dorothy C. Rowe sheds light on the role played by photographer August Sander among the group of artists known as …
Tate Papers

Becoming Machine: Surrealist Automatism and Some Contemporary Instances

David Lomas

Involuntary Drawing
Tate Etc

Tate Etc. issue 23: Autumn 2011

Tate Etc. Issue 23 Autumn 2011, online edition of Tate's magazine
Tate Etc

A graphic wake-up call: Etc. Essay: Inspired by Ernst

Vincent Katz

In 1933 the pioneering Surrealist Max Ernst created an extraordinary publication called Une semaine de bonté. Arguably the first graphic …