A founder of the Surrealist and Dada movements, German artist Max Ernst worked in a range of media, including painting, sculpture and collage. The artist was closely affiliated with artists André Breton and Paul Éluard.
Read MoreMax Ernst's artworks consider themes of mythology, childhood nostalgia, and Freudian metaphors.
In this series of paintings, Ernst depicts windswept creatures tangled up with one another. The creatures appear to be half-bird and half-human and refer to the artist's personal mythology, wherein the birth of his sister coincided with the death of his family's pet bird.
'The Horde' (1927) paintings are richly textured and express the wide range of techniques Ernst explored during this period. The artist's original method of grattage can be seen in the lower section of the painting. The scraping of paint gives the artwork a depth of texture that evokes a dark atmosphere.
Europe After the Rain (1940–1942) depicts a surreal landscape that evokes an apocalyptic state. Although the painting is reminiscent of classical style, the anthropomorphic figures and devolved scenery portray a haunting image of what civilization could be.
The painting is an uncanny representation of how the destruction of the Second World War affected the continent of Europe. In 1940, Nazis condemned Ernst's artistic practice as degenerate. He was interned in a prison camp in France, where he began working on Europe After the Rain. He finished the painting in 1942 after escaping to the United States.
The Dadaist movement of the 1920s saw collage as a way to explore art beyond the realms of painting. Ernst began to experiment with collage from as early as 1919.
A Week of Kindness (1934) is an intricate collage novel that Ernst created by cutting up and rearranging illustrations from scientific journals and 19th-century novels. Ernst's collage conveys a surreal narrative of bourgeois characters transformed into monstrous creatures.
Ernst's collage is dark and humorous. It plays with themes of violence, repressed sexuality, and anticlericalism while extending the boundaries of what art could be in the 20th century.
