On the first of August 1914, Max Ernst died, and on the eleventh of November 1918, he was resurrected. This was not a literal death and resurrection, but a profound psychological transformation that occurred during his service in World War I. Born in Brühl, Germany, in 1891, Ernst was the third of nine children in a strict, middle-class Catholic family. His father, Philipp, was a teacher of the deaf and an amateur painter who instilled in Max a deep-seated desire to defy authority while simultaneously encouraging his artistic instincts. Ernst began painting in 1909 while studying philosophy, art history, and psychology at the University of Bonn. He visited asylums and became fascinated with the artwork of mentally ill patients, a fascination that would later inform his own surrealistic explorations. By 1911, he had joined the Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group, and by 1912, he had been profoundly influenced by the works of Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists like Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. The war shattered his early life, leaving him traumatized and critical of the modern world, a state of mind that would fuel his future artistic rebellion.
The Birth Of Dada
In 1919, Max Ernst returned to Cologne and immediately began to dismantle the artistic conventions of his time. He married Luise Straus, a Jewish art history student he had met in 1914, and together they founded the Cologne Dada group with social activist Johannes Theodor Baargeld. This was not merely a political statement but a radical reimagining of what art could be. Ernst produced his first collages, notably the portfolio Fiat modes, using mail-order catalogues and teaching manuals to create images that juxtaposed the grotesque with the mundane. His marriage to Luise was short-lived, and in 1921, he met Paul Éluard, a poet who would become a lifelong friend and collaborator. Éluard purchased two of Ernst's paintings, Celebes and Oedipus Rex, and selected six collages to illustrate his poetry collection Répétitions. The following year, Ernst, Éluard, and André Breton collaborated on the magazine Littérature. In 1922, unable to secure the necessary papers, Ernst entered France illegally and settled into a ménage à trois with Éluard and his wife Gala in the Paris suburb of Saint-Brice. This arrangement, though initially accepted, eventually led to a separation, with Éluard leaving for Saigon and Vietnam, while Ernst followed, exploring Southeast Asia before returning to Paris in late 1924 to sign a contract with Jacques Viot that allowed him to paint full-time.The Invention Of Technique
In 1925, Max Ernst invented a graphic art technique called frottage, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images. This method, along with grattage, in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of objects placed beneath, became central to his artistic identity. He used these techniques in his famous painting Forest and Dove, which is now housed at the Tate Modern. The next year, he collaborated with Joan Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev, and with Miró's help, he developed grattage further, trowelling pigment from his canvases. Ernst also explored the technique of decalcomania, which involves pressing paint between two surfaces. His fascination with birds, which was prevalent in his work, led him to create an alter ego named Loplop, a bird that often appeared in his collages. He suggested that this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans. One night, when he was young, he woke up and found that his beloved bird had died; a few minutes later, his father announced that his sister was born. This event, and the subsequent creation of Loplop, became a recurring motif in his work, including the controversial 1926 painting The Virgin Chastises the infant Jesus before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter.