馬克斯·恩斯特

signed Max Ernst (lower right)
oil on canvas
100 by 81cm.
Painted in 1960.

Alexander Iolas, New York

Pierre Schlumberger

Pierre-Marcel Schlumberger

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1989

Werner Spies, Max Ernst Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1954-1963, Cologne, 1998, no. 3510, illustrated p. 238

This work is in good, stable condition. The panel is sound and has been cradled. There is a repaired split in the panel to the right of the red double circle. The upper right corner is retouched and a very small spot of retouching in the lower centre, as well as some further tiny spots of retouching on the upper edge.
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A highly abstracted vision of an orb evaporating into a kaleidoscopic haze is the subject of Ernst's richly painted composition from 1960.  This untitled composition was completed around the time Ernst settled down in France after an intermittent, decade-long hiatus in Arizona with Dorothea Tanning. The fantastic quality and the opulence of color Ernst witnessed in the mountains and deserts of the American West during the 1940s and early 1950s made a strong impression on him, and he continued to incorporate the aesthetic of desert moonrises and sunsets in the compositions completed after he returned to France.  The works that he completed during these years evidence the artist's renewed optimism triggered by Europe's post-war recovery, and the present work can be interpreted in this spirit.

In this richly colorful composition, Ernst employed the technique of grattage that he had created during the early days of the Surrealist movement.  This process is most evident near the sharp edges delineating where the palette knife had smoothed and scraped the wet paint, sometimes revealing a darker color beneath the top layer of pigment.  As is the case for the present work, Ernst's paintings of the post-war era exhibited a stylistic duality of composition and disintegration - a suitable metaphor for the times.  According to Werner Spies, his mood during this period "was an ambivalent one, which [Ernst] paraphrased as follows: 'From "The Age of Anxiety" to "The Childhood of Art" only half a rotation of the orthochromatic wheel is required. Between the "Massacre of the Innocents" and "Stepping Through the Looking-Glass" lies an interval merely of one luminous night' ... Ernst remained true to his early decision to strive for a symbolic painting in which open questions, and hence the unfathomable obscurity of existence, took precedence over simplistic positivist explanations and definitive stylistic results" (Spies, Max Ernst, A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), London, 1991, p. 252).