MAX ERNST (1891-1976) Lot n° 16

Tête à Cornes Yellow gold 23 carats (958), weight : 6,41 oz, embossing, signed and numbered EA 1/2 19 x 10 cm 7 31/64 x 3 15/16 in. Recognized as a leading figure of the Surrealist and Dada movements, Max Ernst is a German artist whose work has profoundly influenced the avant-garde of the twentieth century. Born on April 2, 1891 in the city of Brühl, it is after his studies in philosophy and art history at the prestigious University of Bonn in Germany that Max Ernst devoted himself to his painting. Thereafter, Max Ernst will be considered a precursor in his way of working, both in his approach to theory and artistic practice. Indeed, Max Ernst wanted to link in his artistic production the passions that animated him: his work moves between painting, poetry and philosophy. Interview "Max Ernst and surrealism", 1964: "- is that painting and poetry mean the same thing to you?- poetry and painting? it is absolutely the same thing, two different aspects of the same thing". Through his work, Max Ernst creates a dialogue between dream and reality, a path that transmits a poetic and dreamlike dimension to his works. Automatic writing, painting under the influence of hallucinogenic substances or under hypnosis, Max Ernst seeks to free himself from the control of reason in his quest for the link between dream and reality. Making a clean sweep of classical and academic art and working for a resolutely modern work, Max Ernst is a complete artist of modernity: complete in his approach to media such as sculpture, painting or film, and this, through multiple techniques such as scratching, rubbing or collage. Ernst's work is also to be understood as a synthesis of his time, as it is marked and influenced by his peers; thinkers, philosophers and poets of his time, including Paul Éluard and André Breton from his arrival in Paris in the 1920s.