Max Ernst
Prints Available from Grafos Verlag
 Pour bibliothèque nationale 1975 |
Prints from the famous 'Maximiliana'
by Max Ernst are directly related to the print offered here, 'Pour
bibliothèque nationale', from 1975. In this color
lithograph, there are various different frottages, among others, the rubbing
of two plates which move around one another like planets. The bird person
also appears, multiplied in the background until it becomes an abstract
symbol - and a secret code. Decodable? Hardly. One could almost say of
Max Ernst: 'Can an incomprehensible being create a comprehensible painting?'
In this print as well, the bird motif plays a central role. As late as
1964, he produced an overall important and extensive work with 34 color
etchings in which the artist developed a secret code language, which came
into being under his hand like personal hieroglyphs. The bird becomes
a 'lettre automatique' and follows its own laws, the laws of a changing
script. The graphic suite 'Maximiliana ou l'exercise illégale de
l'astronomie' (Maximiliana, or The Illegal Exercise of Astronomy) is built
around the astronomer Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel (1821-1889). He was a Sorb
who had been the first to discover, with his small telescope, the small
fleck of the Pleiades in the heavens. He was a poet, lithographer and
scientist, a victim of a political system. It is simultaneously an homage
to an individual and a revolutionary. Frottages and ciphered signs make
up the principal part. They recall Paul Klee and the inner necessity of
his artistic logic.
|
 Inventar und Widerspruch 1974 |
A horizon, the sky and the
ground, perhaps. The stars and sun become an important point of observation
in paintings from this period as well. Max Ernst paints 'Orbis pictus'
in 1973, and then 'Éternité'. These can be related to
this print from 1974, with a gnome-like insect creature observing a
perfectly round, comet-like phenomenon. The path of the eye from star
to star seems prescribed. Its as if the details were done under a magnifying
glass, a planetary aspect: distance and proximity,Inventar
und Widerspruch (inventory and contradiction), a color
lithograph from 1974 based on rubbing techniques, with very fine nuances.
Max Ernst developed this graphic in a lengthwise format (cf. CR Spies/Leppien
251). It was printed for Werner Spies' work biography, 'Max Ernst -
Collagen. Inventar und Widerspruch'. In the title, the collage is thus
outlined as: 'the combination of two apparently incompatible things
on a single plane'. |
 Ohne Titel 1975 |
Dripping, grattage and frottage build lively
structures in the color-simple graphic, 'Ohne
Titel' (Untitled) from 1975, structures that might evoke reminiscences
of a forest. The forest ground, heritage of Romanticism? Max Ernst's
forest images are often compared with those of Caspar David Friedrich.
The wide horizon and the human being at the edge of the forest. This
is also the human before the unconscious, according to Freud, and this
is something to be considered. Max Ernst is also known for his images
of forests done through empreinte and frottage. The impenetrable, which
resists humanity or calls it, the forest and an isolated object: the
forest and the sun, the forest and a bird, a leaf, the trees. The forest
theme continues into his late work, as 'Lovers in the Forest (1957)
or 'The Last Forest' (1960), a revolt against nature's forces of growth.
In 1962, the clouds are even on strike, as the title of one of his works
proclaims. Max Ernst did not only produce graphic works, but also innumerable
illustrations which were not done as original prints, but mechanically
reproduced. The base for these was often the collage, but also sometimes
frottage that are defamiliarized through collotype. Among these is his
famed 'Histoire Naturelle' from 1926. Ernst was able to develop techniques
in an unconventional and inventive fashion. This is how he often achieved
surprising effects. And the practically impenetrable images of textures
created for him a living wall from which he - like Leonardo da Vinci
had believed - read his visions. |
 Oiseaux |
Max Ernst created his first
sculptures in the summer of 1934, during a stay in Maloja, as a guest
of Alberto Giacometti. The streambed with its stones inspired him. The
found shapes were transformed in Max Ernst's hands. He henceforth created
(in a similar manner as Joan Miró) objects, assemblages and sculptures
as well, in plaster, stone and bronze. Some of these are: 'Oiseau-Tête'
(1934-53), the stele-like 'Hommes' (Men); 'Oedipus' and 'Capricorn'
(1948) as well as the wall reliefs in the house in Saint-Martin and
the bronzes from the 60's. Even the 'Poet of Bronze' appears in the
image of a bird. This is all directly related to the 'Oiseaux'
(Birds) from 1975. The egg shape of the bird's body amusingly recalls
the summer of 1934, when stones inspired him to egg shapes. The morphology
of the egg and the bird is like the relationship between leaf and tree.
In essence, an unusual combination takes place, observed by the birds
sitting there before the heavens, as if they knew of the dilemma of
coordination and flight. |
 Le parquet se soulève |
Six lithographs by Max Ernst
with poems by Jean Tardieu 1939/1973. In 1939, Max Ernst had produced the drawings on transfer paper. The publisher Robert Altmann knows more about the story behind this book: actually, Max Ernst had prepared a total of ten lithographs on transfer paper in 1939 which were to be published with the above-mentioned poems of Paul Eluard, but Gallimard took only the first four for its edition. This was the decisive factor. Years later, Robert Altmann offered Max Ernst the possibility of publishing the remaining six drawings through his publishing house. Max Ernst immediately agreed and the well-known poet, Jean Tardieu, wrote a poem for each print which reflected the graphic images. It became a valuable and at the same time spontaneous edition, printed in 1973 for Brunidor at A. Hürlimann, Zurich, hand signed by the artist and the poet. The poems thus illustrate the pictures: 'Un repas de roi'; 'Cassandre sort des planches'; 'veuve en manteau de violon'; 'ogre changé en ronces'; 'sire vautour dame pelican'; 'cigale de l'espace', these are the titles. Illusion and absurdity can already be perceived in the leitmotif itself: the floor stands up, or revolts. The year in which the drawing for 'Le parquet se soulève' was done, 1939, also saw the tense, divided political situation rise in arms. The Surreal sharpens the eye. One's gaze falls on
the characteristic motifs. Birds, according to Max Ernst, represent
the imaginary world of humans. They become a symbol of human possibilities
and weaknesses, and even cruel absurdity full of foreboding. ek |
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