MAX ERNST (1891-1976)
MAX ERNST (1891-1976)
MAX ERNST (1891-1976)
3 More
Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works
MAX ERNST (1891-1976)

Etamines et marseillaise de Arp

Details
MAX ERNST (1891-1976)
Etamines et marseillaise de Arp
signed, dated and titled 'max ernst 1919 étamines et marseillaise' (lower edge)
gouache, pen and black ink, pencil and ink stamps on printed paper laid down on card
Sheet size (irregular): 12 x 10 in. (30.5 x 25.5 cm.)
Mount size: 17 1⁄8 x 13 1⁄8 in. (43.5 x 33.5 cm.)
Executed in Cologne in 1919
Provenance
Paul Eluard, Paris; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 3 July 1924, lot 9.
Collection Rosenberg (acquired at the above sale).
Kurt and Arlette Seligmann, New York (circa 1936); sale, Christie’s, New York, 3 November 1993, lot 251.
The Pace Gallery, New York (acquired at the above sale).
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 30 June 1994.
Literature
W. Spies, Max Ernst-Collagen: Inventar und Widerspruch, Cologne, 1974, pp. 26-27, 45, 203 and 487, no. 75 (illustrated).
W. Spies, S. and G. Metken, Max Ernst: Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1906-1925, Cologne, 1975, p. 159, no. 315 (illustrated).
W.A. Camfield, Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism, Munich, 1993, p. 365, no. 33 (illustrated, pl. 39).
Exhibited
Berlin, Kunsthandlung Dr. Otto Burchard, Erste Internationale Dada-Messe, July-August 1920, no. 82.
Paris, Galerie Au Sans Pareil, Exposition Dada: Max Ernst, la mise sous whisky Marin, se fait en crème kaki et en cinq anatomies, vive le sport, May-June 1921, no. 19.
Paris, Galerie Beaux-Arts, Exposition internationale du Surréalisme, January-February 1938, p. 5, no. 82.
New York, The Museum of Modern Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, Max Ernst, March-July 1961, no. 180.

Brought to you by

Vanessa Fusco
Vanessa Fusco International Director, Head of Department, Impressionist & Modern Art

Lot Essay

Max Ernst executed Etamines et marseillaise de Arp at the height of his involvement with the Dada movement in Cologne. This work is a deft example of the artist’s celebrated “overpainting” technique—collage-type works in which the artist painted over printed illustrations recycled from an assortment of scientific and mechanical material. Through this method, Ernst granted pictorial forms to his enigmatic, preternatural visions, crafting inexplicable worlds filled with hybrid creatures assembled from automated plants and anthropomorphized machines.
In 1936, Ernst recalled the experience which inspired these works: “On a rainy day in 1919… a teaching aid catalogue caught my attention. I saw advertisements for all kinds of models—mathematical, geometrical, anthropological, zoological, botanical, anatomical, mineralogical, and paleontological—all elements of such a differing nature that the absurdity of their being gathered together confused my eyes and my mind, calling forth hallucinations which in turn gave the objects represented new and rapidly changing meaning… All that was needed to capture this effect was a little color or a few lines, a horizon here, a desert there, a sky, a wooden floor and so on” (“What is the mechanism of collage?” in H.B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, Berkeley, 1968, p. 427).
Etamines et marseillaise de Arp was one of a select number of these early “overpaintings” to feature in Ernst’s landmark solo show at the Galerie Au Sans Pareil in Paris in 1921, an exhibition which introduced the artist to the Parisian avant-garde. The work was previously owned by Ernst’s close friend and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, the pioneering French poet Paul Eluard. It was later acquired by the Swiss-American Surrealist artist Kurt Seligmann, at whose wedding Ernst was a witness together with Jean Arp. Indeed, the title of the present work is a playful reference to Arp, an active member of the Zurich Dada group whose friendship was one of the many forces which drew Ernst into the movement.

More from Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works

View All
View All