Max Ernst

Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York
Dominique de Menil, Houston (acquired from the above on April 18, 1962)
Georges and Lois de Menil (a gift from the above)
A gift from the above to the present owner

Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; Zurich, Kunsthaus, Max Ernst Austellung, 1962-63, no. 120
New York, The Jewish Museum, Max Ernst: Sculpture and Recent Paintings, 1966, no. 36
Houston, Rice University Institute for the Arts; Paris, Centre national d'art contemporain; Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Inside the Sight, 1970-74, no. 79
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Max Ernst: A Retrospective, 1975, no. 270
Paris, Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Exposition Max Ernst, 1975, no. 299

John Russell, Max Ernst, Life and Work, New York, 1967, no. 41, illustrated p. 165
Ian Turpin, Ernst, New York
Gaston Diehl, Max Ernst, New York, 1973, illustrated p. 60
Gerard Barrière, "Max Ernst", Connaissance des arts, June, 1975, no. 580, illustrated p. 88
Edward Quinn, Max Ernst, New York, 1977, no. 409, illustrated p. 331
Bob Reigle: The Marriage of Heaven and Earth, Aaardwood Records, New York, 1982, illustrated as the record jacket
Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1954-1963, Cologne, 1998, no. 3631, illustrated p. 302

By 1962, Max Ernst was at the height of his artistic expression.  Throughout his career Ernst's creative passion continuously drove him to explore new forms of expression. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, he immersed himself in the founding of the Dada protest movement, and later in the decade was again at the core of Surrealism.  He continued his free exploration into new techniques such as frottage and grattage while living in America during World War II, powerfully influencing the post-war American Abstract Expressionist artists in New York. Ernst returned to Paris in the early 1950s with a spirit of optimism renewed by Europe’s post-war recovery. The Marriage of Heaven and Earth dates from this important period, in which earlier themes intersect with Ernst’s incredibly modern, and post-modern, artistic sensibility.

Astronomy was a central focus for Ernst during this period.   He was magnetically drawn to the romanticism of the unknown, a notion that had sparked much of his artistic exploration. Two years after painting the present work, Ernst published Maximiliana ou l’Exercice illégal de l’astronomie - a series of illustrations in homage to the great nineteenth-century astronomer, Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel. Werner Spies describes this work as indicative of Ernst's complex mentality:  "Maximiliana focuses on the last twenty years of Tempel's life, when he traveled through Europe seeking an observatory in which he could pursue his work, looking into the vast realm of interstellar space in a time dominated by narrow minds. His was a life and a quest marked by war, flight, and exile, a life and a quest whose parallels with Ernst's own are obvious and strong. These parallels offered Ernst an opportunity to create a biography that was also an autobiography. In the spirals and mists of Tempel's nebulae, he discerned the Surrealist's romantic worldview expressed in Breton's term "explosante-fixe." In his homage to Tempel, Ernst drew together and united the threads of Dada protest and the Surrealists' triumph over violence." (Werner Spies, "Nightmare and Deliverance," Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p. 18.)  The Marriage of Heaven and Earth provides a stunning demonstration of the astronomical concepts that captivated Max Ernst’s imagination during these years.