Max Ernst : Life and Work. An Autobiographical Collage

Ernst, Max. Spies, Werner (Editor)

ISBN 10: 0500976589 / ISBN 13: 9780500976586

Published by Thames & Hudson, UK, 2006

About this Item

24 x 31cm 350pp very good hardback in dust jacket, contents divided into activities which took place in different countries - Germany, France, America and Europe, accompanied by related works shown in colour and black and white. Max Ernst was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. 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 textured objects and relief surfaces to create images and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, which left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.A heavy book, may need extra postage.

Seller Inventory # 32538

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Max Ernst : Life and Work. An Autobiographical Collage
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson, UK
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0500976589
• ISBN 13: 9780500976586
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Very good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

A penetrating, intimate portrayal of the creative life of an individual artist and of the artistic life of the twentieth century.

Throughout his career, Max Ernst created fantastic worlds through images. But it is only when one sees his work in relation to the images of his personal life—his letters, photographs, poetry, and diaries, so brilliantly reproduced on these pages—that one begins to understand his world, a world spent at the epicenter of twentieth-century artistic life.

Max Ernst: Life and Work draws on an unprecedented collection of source material, much of it published here for the first time, to present a compelling portrait of the artist's life and an intellectual portrait of the period. Edited by Werner Spies, a close friend of Max Ernst and the leading authority on his extraordinarily rich, surreal world, it includes letters and notes by friends and contemporaries that provide insight into the reception of Ernst's oeuvre and shed light on his biography. The vast range of documents includes texts by Hans (Jean) Arp, André Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul éluard, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Benjamin Perêt, Lotte Lenya, Leonora Carrington, and many others.

Ernst's life and work were intimately interwoven, and the hundreds of documents here are interspersed with numerous reproductions of his work, all of which recall the variety and richness of the artist's discoveries and innovations. Ernst—dubbed "Dada Max"—played a vital role in the history of Dada and Surrealism in Cologne, Zurich, and Paris, and shaped the face of the New York art scene during his exile there. 615 illustrations, 154 in color.

About the Author

Werner Spies has organized numerous major exhibitions in Europe, and has published widely on twentieth-century art, notably on the Surrealist movement. He is the general editor of Max Ernst's catalogue raisonné.