Lot Essay
Ernst and Baargelt were eager to establish contacts with other Dada groups outside of Cologne, and in late 1919 Ernst communicated with Tristan Tzara in Paris. In January, 1920, Tzara, with André Breton and Francis Picabia, unleashed Dada in Paris.
For two years Ernst had been exasperated at being unable to obtain a visa to visit Paris. Breton and Tzara, however, helped to organize the Exposition Dada Max Ernst at galerie Au Sans Pareil in Paris in May, 1921; it proved to be one of the major events of the three-month-long Dada Season. Ernst was pleased at the reception accorded this exhibition, and although still unable to attend because of passport difficulties, he contributed two of his larger works, the Graminaceous Bicycle (Spies no. 428) and Landscape in Scrap Iron, offered here, to the last major Dada event of the Season, the Salon Dada at the Galerie Montaigne in June.
The 1921 Dada Season was noteworthy for partisan verbal and physical confrontation in the magazines, at the galleries and soirées and in the concert halls. Picabia, who was becoming disgusted with the discipline he felt Breton was trying to impose upon the movement, defected around the time of Ernst's exhibition in May. Although the two events were not related, Picabia's departure coincides with Ernst's ascendent star in the Paris Dada movement, and a shift in sensibility is observable. In contrast to the mechanomorphic constructions of the early Paris Dadaists, Ernst's imagery grows from organic, animated origins, and are often haunting and dreamlike. For these reasons Professor William Camfield has described the works of this period to be "already proto-Surrealist, if not Surrealist" (op. cit., p. 97).
For two years Ernst had been exasperated at being unable to obtain a visa to visit Paris. Breton and Tzara, however, helped to organize the Exposition Dada Max Ernst at galerie Au Sans Pareil in Paris in May, 1921; it proved to be one of the major events of the three-month-long Dada Season. Ernst was pleased at the reception accorded this exhibition, and although still unable to attend because of passport difficulties, he contributed two of his larger works, the Graminaceous Bicycle (Spies no. 428) and Landscape in Scrap Iron, offered here, to the last major Dada event of the Season, the Salon Dada at the Galerie Montaigne in June.
The 1921 Dada Season was noteworthy for partisan verbal and physical confrontation in the magazines, at the galleries and soirées and in the concert halls. Picabia, who was becoming disgusted with the discipline he felt Breton was trying to impose upon the movement, defected around the time of Ernst's exhibition in May. Although the two events were not related, Picabia's departure coincides with Ernst's ascendent star in the Paris Dada movement, and a shift in sensibility is observable. In contrast to the mechanomorphic constructions of the early Paris Dadaists, Ernst's imagery grows from organic, animated origins, and are often haunting and dreamlike. For these reasons Professor William Camfield has described the works of this period to be "already proto-Surrealist, if not Surrealist" (op. cit., p. 97).