Max Ernst

Galerie Guillaume Campo, Antwerp
Galerie Tarica, Paris
Acquired directly from the above in Paris in the 1960s

Cologne, Richmod-Galerie Casimir Hagen, Jankel Adler, Gerd Arntz, Max Ernst..., 1926, illustrated
Brussels, Galerie Le Centaure, Max Ernst, 1927, no. 40
Munich, Modern Art Museum, Sammlung Gunter Sachs, 1967, illustrated
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Passions Privée: Collections Particulières, 1995-1996, no. A51-3, illustrated
Apolda, Kunsthaus Apolda Avantgarde & Hamburg, Ernst Barlach Haus, Max Ernst. Traumlandschaften, 2004-2005, no. 17, illustrated in colour
Stockholm, Moderna Museet & Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Max Ernst. Dream and Revolution, 2008-2009

Winthertur, Kunstmuseum, Die Natur der Kunst: Begegnungen mit der Natur vom 19. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart, 2010-2011, no. 53, illustrated in colour

Max Ernst (ed.), Max Ernst, Œuvre de 1919 à 1936, Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1937, p. 48, illustrated
Eva Petrová, Max Ernst, Prague, 1965, no. 18, illustrated
Vratislav Effenberger, Surrealistikà imaginace (L'imagination surrealiste), Prague, 1969, no. 26, illustrated
Werner Spies, Max Ernst Œuvre-Katalog. Werke 1925-1929, Cologne, 1976, p. 70, no. 927, illustrated

 

Max Ernst's enigmatic La Fôret is a remarkable example of the dramatic and highly influential form of Surrealism he pioneered during the 1920s. Throughout his career, Ernst's work was dominated by images of the natural world, such as forests, birds and seashells, and it was in the series of Fôret paintings, such as the present work and its contemporary in the Art Institute of Chicago (fig. 1), and La fleur du desert (fig. 2), that the artist first explored his newly-developed grattage technique. Ernst recalled that he discovered the technique whilst staying in a small hotel in Pornic on the Atlantic coast of France. He placed sheets of paper upon the bare wooden floorboards and rubbed soft graphite over the paper causing the intricate grain of the wood to become impressed upon the paper. Werner Spies writes: 'By combining a variety of the resulting relief-like textures he created imagery that spurred him to interpretation and, with a few strokes added by hand, creatures and scenes came in to focus' (W. Spies in Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1991, p. 128).

Adapting this practice to the medium of oil-painting, Ernst would cover the canvas with layers of paint and place it over an uneven surface or an object. He would then scrape the pigment of the surface, and complex patterns would emerge. Ernst stated that frottage and grattage were 'the technical means of augmenting the hallucinatory capacity of the mind so that 'visions' could occur automatically, a means of doffing one's blindness' (quoted in Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism (exhibition catalogue), Menil Collection, Houston, 1993, p. 157). In the case of the Fôret series the relationship between the actual technique and the artistic manifestation is symbolically organic, and a way for Ernst to prove his allegiance to the automatist school of Surrealism championed by André Breton. Spies commented on the importance of frottage and grattage: 'In the course of the following years – years which William Rubin has called the 'heroic epoch of Surrealist painting' – this technique, known as grattage, led to astonishingly innovative imagery. The pictures became more abstract in effect, the richness of their scintillating colour, made them high points of imaginative Surrealist art in the late 1920s' (W. Spies, ibid., 1991, p. 148).

Discussing the Fôret pictures Diane Waldman states: 'It is in the theme of the forest that Ernst appears to have found a unique equation for what he describes as his aim "to bring into the light of the day the results of voyages of discovery in the unconscious", to record "what is seen... and experienced... on the frontier between the inner and outer world". This recording of the frontier between the inner and outer world parallels the achievements of Caspar David Friedrich, for who Ernst has expressed great admiration [...] The forest pictures reveal to a far greater extent how close the degree of his affinity is to German Romanticism' (D. Waldman, Max Ernst: a retrospective (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, p. 43).

The image of the forest became a defining theme for Ernst throughout his career (fig. 3). His sister recalled that 'Max never forgot the enchantment and the awe he felt when his father took him out into the forest' (quoted in Max Ernst: Gemälde und Graphik (exhibition catalogue), Schloss Augustusburg, Brühl, 1951, p. 90). The series of Fôret pictures were a direct challenge to the naturalistic presentation of the forest from a traditionally observational perspective, rather he wished to pose the question: 'What is a forest? Mixed feelings when we entered the forest for the first time, enchantment and depression. And what the Romantics baptized the 'feeling of nature'. The wonderful delight in breathing free in the open air, but the trepidation of being imprisoned on all sides by hostile trees at the same time. Simultaneously outdoors and indoors, free and captive' (quoted in John Russell, The Essential Max Ernst, London, 1972, p. 32).

Fig. 1, Max Ernst, La Fôret, 1925, oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Fig. 2, Max Ernst, La fleur du desert, 1925, oil and graphite on canvas. Sold: Sotheby's London, Looking Closely: A Private Collection, 10^th February 2011

Fig. 3, Max Ernst, La Grande Fôret, 1927, oil on canvas, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum, Basel