German artist (1891–1976)
People connected to Max Ernst
He invented ways to make art that had never existed — frottage, grattage, collage novels — because he had no training to tell him he couldn't. A Dadaist who survived one world war as a soldier and the second as an "undesirable foreigner," Ernst turned trauma and contempt for the modern world into surrealist images that felt like fever dreams with a punchline
Ernst was born in Brühl in 1891 and started painting in 1909 while studying at the University of Bonn, joining Die Rheinischen Expressionisten soon after. Four years as a soldier in World War I left him shocked and traumatised, and that rupture fed directly into his pioneering work in Dada and surrealism — movements built on ironic juxtaposition, grotesque elements, and a distrust of reason. He developed frottage (pencil rubbings of textured surfaces) and grattage (scraping paint to reveal objects beneath) as techniques, and built novels from collages. Birds appeared constantly in his work, es…
Sourced, dated quotes from Max Ernst
Studies in painting: Non. He learned to express himself by means of art in the same way as the child learns to talk.
A painter may know what he doesn't want. But woe be to him if he desires to know what he wants. A painter is lost if he finds himself.
I saw a shady forest and therein a crowd of nightingales.
The 2nd of April (1891) at 9:45 a.m.
Max Ernst died the 1st of August 1914. He resuscitated the 11th of November 1918 as a young man aspiring to become a magician and to find the myth of his time.
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