Max Ernst

Life and work

He began painting that year, producing sketches in the garden of Brühl castle and portraits of his sister and himself.^[2] After demobilization in 1918, he returned to Cologne and soon married art history student Luise Straus.^[3] In 1925, Ernst invented the frottage technique and also created the grattage technique.^[4] He died at age 84 on 1 April 1976 in Paris and was interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery.^[5]

A friendship with August Macke began in 1911, leading Ernst to join Macke's Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group and choose art as his career.^[2] The Cologne Dada group was established in 1919 by Ernst, Johannes Theodor Baargeld, and several other associates.^[3]

What the cited sources add

The Olga's Gallery biography states that Ernst never received any formal artistic training.^[6] According to theartstory account, Ernst was profoundly interested in the art of the mentally ill as a means to access primal emotion and unfettered creativity.^[7] The Ordovasart biography reports that Ernst's son Hans-Ulrich became better known as 'Jimmy Ernst', one of the Abstract Expressionists.^[8] The Olga's Gallery account explains that in the late 1920s Ernst turned to motifs of German Romanticism, reviving them in a new, Surrealistic manner.^[6]

The Ordovasart source states that Ernst married a Frenchwoman, Marie-Berthe Aurenche, and subsequently lived with the artist Leonora Carrington.^[8] The theartstory account mentions that in later life Ernst devoted much time to playing and studying chess, which he revered as an art form.^[7]

Life and war

World War I saw Ernst conscripted, and he fought on both the Western and Eastern Fronts.^[9]