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• Max
Ernst
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ERNST Max, born 1891 Brühl (near Cologne) - 1976 Paris.
German painter, graphic artist and sculptor.
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1918 |
Studied classical
philology at Bonn University and painted on the side.
After military service, returned to Cologne and founded a
Dada group with Arp in 1918. |
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1919 |
First
overpaintings, cliche-prints and collages which were
exhibited, at the invitation of Breton, in Paris in 1921. |
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1921 |
Moved to Paris
and was a co-founder of the Surrealist group led by
Breton. |
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1925 |
Introduced and
developed several new art techniques, such as frottage,
grattage and décalcomanie, which were to introduce the
stimulus of the coincidental into the creative process.
His works from the late 20s had poetic, surreal titles
such as Windsbraut, Vogelmonument, Muschelblumen (Bride
of the Winds, Bird Monument, Shell Flowers). |
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1929-34 |
Made collage
novels. |
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1930 |
Collaborated with
Luis Buñuel and Dali on the film L'Age d'Or. |
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1938 |
Broke away from
the Surrealists. |
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1939 |
Was interned in
France. |
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1941 |
Emigrated to the
USA. |
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1946 |
Settled in
Sedona, Arizona, where he concentrated mainly on
sculptural works. |
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1953 |
Despite the
widespread recognition he received in America, he
returned to Paris in 1953 |
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1963 |
Settled in the
South of France. |
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1961 |
First important retrospective at
the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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The
Hour of Pure Abstraction.
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Nothing could be more mistaken
than to consider these artists, who wished to be neither
reformers nor revolutionaries, a group of level-headed
intellectuals. Kandinsky and Marc in particular, much
like the Romantics before them, saw art as being closely
related to religion. Kandinsky's thinking was rooted in
an emotional Christianity of the Slavic variety, and
Marc's thinking and feeling grew out of a highly
imaginative and decidedly Romantic sense of nature, which
prompted a yearning for purity and redemption. The most
important criterion of all artistic activity for the
Blauer Reiter members was - in Kandinsky's phrase -
"inner necessity." With their art they hoped to
set the viewer's mind in sympa-
thetic vibration, not upset it by distorting and
radically reducing their motifs like the rebellious
architecture students in Dresden.
Far from the Brilcke's converted railroad station and the
scene of their famous and riotous "Dresden
Fests" at the Baroque Fürstenhof, the artists in
sophisticated Munich preached not neo-primitivism but
profound contemplation and sensibility. In Kandinsky's
eyes, fundamental emotions such as love, lust, and
anxiety were "material," that is, vulgar
emotions, and as such had no place in art. He intended to
strike more sensitive chords in the human soul. The art
of the Blauer Reiter, with the exception of the
uncomplicated and worldly Macke, tended to the
transcendental, metaphysical, the realm of pure mind.
Despite all its emotionality, it was informed by a
philosophical strain. It was an art of thinking painters
for twentieth-century man. Inspiration was subjected to
rational control; no attempt was made to pretend that
innocence and naivety had not been irrevocably lost. Pure
realism could be found only among a few, truly naive
sorcerers of painting like Henri Rousseau. For the
others, above all Kandinsky, the hour of pure
abstraction, what he called the "great
abstract," had come.
The aesthetic revolution did not break out suddenly. It
was prepared for over a long period, and Kandinsky was
almost 45 years old when, between 1910 and 1913, he
advanced to abstraction. His famous "first abstract
watercolor," dated by the artist to 1910, was long
considered the incunabulum of abstract painting (ill.
above). However, it was likely not rendered until about
1913, as recent stylistic and technical investigations
appear to prove.
Quote:
"As has been said often enough, it is impossible to
make clear the aim of a work of art by means of words.
Despite a certain superficiality with which this
assertion is leveled and in particular exploited, it is
by and large correct, and remains so even at a time of
the greatest education and knowledge of language and its
material. And this assertion - I now abandon the realm of
objective reasoning - is also correct because the artist
himself can never either grasp or recognize fully his own
aim."
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'Spring in Paris', 1950, pencil, oil on
canvas
89 x 115 cm (35 x 42 ")
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