MAX ERNST Germany 1891-1976 Tête blanche Signed Max Ernst Dated on the reverse 57. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27 cm. . PROVENANCE Edouard Loeb, Paris The Mayor Gallery, London IngaBritt and Arne Lundberg, Gothenburg, Sweden . EXHIBITED Mayor Gallery, London 1959, catalogue No 10 . LITERATURE Max Ernst Oeuvre-Katalog Werke 1954-63, Catalogue Raisonné, Wittenborns Art Books, catalogue No 3259, page 111 . PUBLISHED Art revue: Cimaise. Revue de l'Art Actuel, Nov-Dec 1957, No 2, illustrated page 21 . . Max Ernst was a pioneer in both Dadaism and surrealism. Through painting the subconscious in an automatic style, he subsequently came to influence the American abstract expressionists. He shocked his public with his dream-like pictures, which were often sharply critical of society, but always full of energy and humour. . Ernst was one of the first artists to apply Freud's dream theories in an attempt to explore the source of his own creativity. He sought to create a flow between his creative work and his psyche with a view to tapping into his inner child. By applying this method to his assemblage works and paintings, he aimed to liberate his original feelings and slay the demons of his personal traumas. Toward the end of the 1920s, Ernst created a separate persona in Loplop - Superior of birds, a bird-like being tied to Max Ernst the person, sometimes winged - always sexual. Loplop was not just Ernst's personal symbol, it was also his compère and guide on the inner voyage. . In the early 1930s, he met the art collector Peggy Guggenheim, and they soon became a couple. It was thanks to her that he was able to emigrate to the United States on the outbreak of the Second World War. Ernst's automatic style of painting from the subconscious inspired a number of artists in the gradually developing abstract expressionist movement. His marriage to Peggy Guggenheim did not last long, and in 1946 he married the artist Dorothea Tanning with whom he moved to the South of France in 1953. .The painting Tête blanche is from 1957, painted while he was living in France, during a period in which his automatic painting had reached its peak. He has used a palette knife to apply light grey colour such that an underlying sea of colour can only just be discerned through a diagonal network of lines. There is a lighter patch in the central area of the composition, allowing a suggestive face looking out at the observer to be sensed.
MAX ERNST Germany 1891-1976 Tête blanche Signed Max Ernst Dated on the reverse 57. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27 cm. . PROVENANCE Edouard Loeb, Paris The Mayor Gallery, London IngaBritt and Arne Lundberg, Gothenburg, Sweden . EXHIBITED Mayor Gallery, London 1959, catalogue No 10 . LITERATURE Max Ernst Oeuvre-Katalog Werke 1954-63, Catalogue Raisonné, Wittenborns Art Books, catalogue No 3259, page 111 . PUBLISHED Art revue: Cimaise. Revue de l'Art Actuel, Nov-Dec 1957, No 2, illustrated page 21 . . Max Ernst was a pioneer in both Dadaism and surrealism. Through painting the subconscious in an automatic style, he subsequently came to influence the American abstract expressionists. He shocked his public with his dream-like pictures, which were often sharply critical of society, but always full of energy and humour. . Ernst was one of the first artists to apply Freud's dream theories in an attempt to explore the source of his own creativity. He sought to create a flow between his creative work and his psyche with a view to tapping into his inner child. By applying this method to his assemblage works and paintings, he aimed to liberate his original feelings and slay the demons of his personal traumas. Toward the end of the 1920s, Ernst created a separate persona in Loplop - Superior of birds, a bird-like being tied to Max Ernst the person, sometimes winged - always sexual. Loplop was not just Ernst's personal symbol, it was also his compère and guide on the inner voyage. . In the early 1930s, he met the art collector Peggy Guggenheim, and they soon became a couple. It was thanks to her that he was able to emigrate to the United States on the outbreak of the Second World War. Ernst's automatic style of painting from the subconscious inspired a number of artists in the gradually developing abstract expressionist movement. His marriage to Peggy Guggenheim did not last long, and in 1946 he married the artist Dorothea Tanning with whom he moved to the South of France in 1953. .The painting Tête blanche is from 1957, painted while he was living in France, during a period in which his automatic painting had reached its peak. He has used a palette knife to apply light grey colour such that an underlying sea of colour can only just be discerned through a diagonal network of lines. There is a lighter patch in the central area of the composition, allowing a suggestive face looking out at the observer to be sensed.
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
