Mur et soleil

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Original Serigraphy. Signed in pencil and numbered 42 / 100 copies. Sheet from the portfolio "Kunst für Forschung", published in Bern in 1970. Max Ernst is a German painter and sculptor who was born in Brühl in 1891 and died in Paris in 1976. As the son of the painter Philipp Ernst, he began studying philosophy at the University of Bonn in 1909, but quickly gave up this path to devote himself to art. In 1911 he met the members of the Blaue Reiter group, with whom he exhibited two years later. Between 1909 and 1913 his first paintings were initially expressionist in inspiration and later became more surreal. In 1913 he traveled to Paris and met Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay. World War I then spread to Europe and Max Ernst found a common desire for protest among his peers in the Dada movement. He then took an active part in the Dada movement in Cologne, which became an important center of the movement. The influence of Paul Klee and Marcel Duchamp shaped his works at this time. In 1929 he discovered the metaphysical paintings of De Chirico and in 1921 he became Paul Eluard's friend. He then explores dreamlike painting in a fantastically realistic style. In 1925, he invented the rubbing technique, which consists in moving his pencil on a sheet of paper on different surfaces, randomly revealing mysterious shapes. During his many travels he also made collages and later tried his hand at sculpture. In 1945, Max Ernst fled Europe for New York, where he continued his art with Marc Chagall and Marcel Duchamp, contributing to the birth of Abstract Expressionism. However, he returned to France in the 1950s and was expelled from the Surrealist movement after winning a prize at the Venice Biennale. A Max Ernst Museum with 300 of his works was opened in Brühl in 2005 and numerous exhibitions are dedicated to him, especially in Paris.