Max Ernst. The Paris Years

Max Ernst (1891–1976) was an outstanding German and French artist, a prominent figure in 20th-century art. He studied philosophy, literature, the history of art and Psychology at Bonn University. During the First World War he was called up and served in the German army on both Western and Eastern Fronts, which was a gravely traumatic experience. After returning home, Ernst joined the circle of Dadaists and began to develop that movement’s ideas in Cologne. In 1922 he moved to Paris, where he soon became one of the key exponents of a new artistic tendency – Surrealism. After the Second World War broke out, Ernst moved to the USA, where he continued to experiment with artistic techniques. In 1950 he returned to France.

The exhibition is devoted to a brief, but key period in the artist’s life – the 1920s, which Ernst spent in France. This extremely important time for world art was marked by the transition from Dadaism to Surrealism – both in Ernst’s oeuvre and in European art more generally. The works featured in the exhibition make it possible to trace how the artist gradually shifted away from the formal experiments of Dadaism towards a more poetic and cohesive artistic image that in turn proves to be a Surrealistic paradox.

Max Ernst became a prominent participant in the artistic life of Paris even before he moved there: his first personal exhibition was held in 1921. It was then that the French capital saw Ernst’s Dadaist collages that differed from the general chaotic nature of works by the exponents of Dada in the integrity of their images and their persuasive magical power. The delight with which the Parisian public received that exhibition anticipated the contribution that Ernst would make in the years that followed to the formation of Surrealism.

The early 1920s were marked by the lack of a clear artistic course and the absence of precisely formulated conceptions. It was as if the Parisian creative community was blundering around in the fog (hence the term époque floue – “vague or blurry era”), groping for a new frame of reference. The creative intelligentsia that had previously been fascinated with the idea of destroying all stylistic canons and deconstructing the aesthetics of the pre-war period was forced to acknowledge that Dada had become the very thing against which it had revolted – one more tendency in art. Parisian poets and artists were in search of new forms of expression, while in parallel reworking ideas that were typical of Dada. Among other things, the concept of randomness, automatism, the non-involvement of an author in the creation of a work were interpreted by the future Surrealists within the framework of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious mind. Max Ernst, who had been interested in Freud’s ideas since his university days, continued in Paris to work on perfecting the collage technique and also on the incorporation of collage principles into painting. Ernst’s works of this period form a bridge between his Dadaist experiments and the illusionism of the Surrealist canvases, It could be said that until 1924 Ernst’s art was in a proto-Surrealist phase that coincided chronologically with the époque floue.

In 1924, after André Breton’s publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto, the artistic life of Paris was transformed: at last ideas were formulated that French poets set about making a reality. At that moment Max Ernst was travelling in the Far East and there was a certain pause in his creative endeavours, while bohemian Paris was animatedly discussing the manifesto. When he arrived back in France, Ernst returned to work, but there was already a difference from his proto-Surrealist works. The pictures that he produced after the brief intermission were marked by a new more abstract manner. Seeking to find a place for Surrealism in figurative art, in 1925 Ernst invented the technique of frottage, which in essence became an implementation of automatism in the visual arts. The artist placed various objects with a relief surface beneath a sheet of paper and made a rubbing with a pencil, obtaining images of real-life objects divorced from their initial significance. The album Histoire Naturelle that is included in the exhibition, presents a Surrealistic world inhabited by fantastic creatures and bizarre plants. Two year later the artist invented a similar technique in painting – grattage. Ernst produced these works by scraping paint off prepared canvases while they were lying on such materials as wire netting, seashells or string laid chaotically on a table (Young People Trampling Their Mother; Small Monument to Birds).

Max Ernst’s inventiveness played an important in the consolidation of Surrealist painting. No little merit should also go to his collage works, which he put together with particular care: when pasting up the various cuttings, the artist made the joints practically invisible, allowing the viewer to perceive what was depicted as an integral image in its own right. Ernst then repeated many of those works in graphic art (The Beautiful Woman Gardener) or painting, regarding the Surrealist picture as “a collage drawn by hand”.

Max Ernst considered himself a visionary whose soul was “monstrous” and looking at his works that can be believed. He mastered the alchemy of images at such a high level that it seems there was indeed something mystical about him, something that allowed him to create fantastic worlds that, despite their irrationality, seem extremely real.

The core of the display comprises twenty paintings from the collection of the artist’s first Parisian dealer Aram Mouradian. He organized Ernst’s exhibitions in France and that laid the foundation of their enduring firm friendship. After Mouradian’s death in 1974, the works remained within his family. They are being presented in the exhibition by his grandson, José Maria Jimenez-Alfaro Mouradian. These works are supplemented by three more from the same period that come from other private collections. The display also includes frottages from the album Histoire Naturelle that have been provided by the St Petersburg collector Mark Bashmakov.

The exhibition curator is Anastasia Chaladze, junior researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art. The exhibition has been prepared as part of the Hermitage 20/21 project that aims to collect, exhibit and study art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

An illustrated catalogue has been prepared for the exhibition: Maks Ernst. Parizhskie gody (Fontanka Publications, 2019). The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive educational programme.