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Max Ernst (April 2, 1891 – April 1, 1976)
was a German artist.

Max Ernst was born in Brühl, Germany. In 1909, he
enrolled in the University at Bonn to study
philosophy but soon abandoned the courses to
pursue his interest in art. In 1913 he met
Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay, and
traveled to the Montparnasse Quarter in Paris
where artists from around the world were
gathering.

In 1918 he married the art historian Luise Straus
— a stormy relationship that would not last.
The next year he visited Paul Klee and created his
first paintings, block prints and collages, and
experimented with mixed media. During World War I
he served in the German army and after the war,
filled with new ideas, Max Ernst, Jean Arp and
social activist Johannes Theodor Baargeld|Alfred
Grünwald, formed the Cologne, Germany Dada group
but two years later, in 1922, he returned to the
artistic community at Montparnasse in Paris. 

Constantly experimenting, in 1925 he invented
frottage, a technique using pencil rubbings of
objects. The next year he collaborated with Joan
Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With
Miró's help, Ernst pioneered grattage in which he
troweled pigment from his canvases.

Ernst drew a great deal of controversy with his
1926 painting The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child
before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul
Éluard, and the Painter.

In Montparnasse he was important in the birth of
Surrealism where artists used illogical images,
and used the whims of their psyches the source of
their subject matter. After a period with the
Surrealists, Ernst left the movement due in part
to André Breton|Breton's desire to ostracize
Ernst's friend Paul Éluard|Éluard.

Ernst began to sculpt in 1934, and spent time with
Alberto Giacometti.

In 1938, the United States|American heiress and
art collector, Peggy Guggenheim, acquired a number
of Ernst's works which she displayed in her new
museum in London.

Ernst developed a fascination with birds that was
prevelent in his work. His alter ego in paintings,
that he called Loplop, was a bird that he
suggested was an extension of himself stemming
from an early confusion of birds and humans.  He
said his sister was born soon after his bird died.
Loplop often appeared in collages of other artists
work, such as collages like Loplop presents André
Breton, and they usually had a bird foot-like
object superimposed on another artist's piece.
Birds continued to appear in Ernst's work, such as
the post-World War II paintings Angel of Hearth
and Home and Robing of the Bride. 

Following the onset of World War II, Ernst was
detained as an enemy alien but with the assistance
of the American journalist Varian Fry in
Marseille, he managed to escape the country with
Peggy Guggenheim. They arrived in the United
States in 1941 and were married the following
year. Along with other artists and friends (Marcel
Duchamp and Marc Chagall) who had fled from the
war and lived in New York City, Ernst helped
inspire the development of Abstract expressionism.


His marriage to Guggenheim did not last, and in
Beverly Hills, California in October of 1946 in a
double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Bowser he
married Dorothea Tanning.

Ernst remained primarily in the United States,
living in Sedona, Arizona, and in 1948 wrote the
treatise Beyond Painting before visiting Europe in
1950.  He returned to Paris permanently in 1953
and the following year he won the Venice Biennale.
As a result of the publicity, he began to achieve
financial success.

In 1963 he and Tanning moved to a small town in
the south of France where he continued to work. He
designed stage sets and a fountain for the city of
Ambois. In 1975, a retrospective of his works was
held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New
York City, and the Galeries Nationales du
Grand-Palais in Paris published a complete
catalogue of his works.

Ernst died on April 1, 1976, in Paris, France and
was interred there in the Père Lachaise|Père
Lachaise Cemetery.

==Legacy==

American post punk group Mission of Burma titled
two songs after the artist: 1979's "Max Ernst",
and 2004's "Max Ernst's Dream".

==Selected list of works==
*1919 :image:Trophy_Hypertrophied.jpg|Trophy,
Hypertrophied 
*1919
:image:Farewell_My_Beautiful_Land.jpg|Farewell My
Beautiful Land of Marie Laurencin. Help! Help!
*1919 :image:Aquis_Submersus.jpg|Aquis Submersus
*1919-1920|20 Little Machine Constructed by
Minimax Dadamax in Person
*1920 The Hat Makes the Man
*1920 :image:EverythingisStillFloating.jpg|Here
Everything is Still Floating
*1920 Dada Gauguin
*1921 The Elephant Celebes
*1921
:image:BirdsFish-SnakeandScarecrow.jpg|Birds,
Fish-Snake and Scarecrow
*1921 :image:Max_Ernst_Seascape.jpg|Seascape
*1921 :image:Approaching_Puberty.jpg|Approaching
Puberty or the Pleiads
*1922 Oedipus Rex
*1923 Holy Caecilie - The Invisible Piano
*1923 Men Shall Know Nothing of This
*1923 Histoire Naturelle
*1923 The Equivocal Woman
*1923 Pieta or Revolution by Night
*1923 Ubu Imperator
*1923-1924|4 Woman, Old Man and Flower
*1924 Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingle
*1924 Dadaville
*1925 Mer et Soleil - Lignes de Navigation
*1925 Paris Dream
*1926 The Numerous Family
*1927 The Kiss
*1927 Der grosse Wald
*1927 Gulf Stream
*1927 Forêt
*1927 Forest and Dove
*1927 Fishbone Forest
*1928 Tree of Life
*1928 The Sea
*1928 Die Erwählte des Bösen
*1929 Et les Papillions se Mettent a Chanter
*1933 Zoonomorphic Couple
*1934 The Entire City
*1936 The Nymph Echo
*1937 L’Ange du Foyer ou Le Triomphe du
Surréalime
*1940 Attirement of the Bride
*1940 Spanish Physician
*1940-1942|2 Europe After the Rain
*1941-1942|2 Day and Night
*1942 Surrealism and Painting
*1943 Window
*1943-1944|4 The Eye of Silence
*1944 The King Playing with the Queen
*1944 Moonmad
*1944 The Table is Set
*1944 Napoleon in the Wilderness
*1946 Phases of the Night
*1947 Dangerous Correspondance
*1948 Capricorn
*1950 Parisian Woman
*1951 The Weatherman
*1956 L’oiseau Rose/Der Rosa Vogel
*1958 Petite Feerie Nocturne
*1960 Paysage Arizona
*1960 Ursachen der Sonne
*1965 Grand Ignorant
*1967 Corps Enseignant Pour une  École de Tueurs
*1968 Nordlicht am Nordrhein
*1970 Ein Mond ist guter Dinge

==External links==
*http://www.fantasyarts.net/Max_Ernst.htm Fantasy
Arts - Ernst paintings, biography, and historical
information
*http://www.abcgallery.com/E/ernst/ernst.html
Olga's Gallery - Images of Ernst art and a
biography