Untitled (Person with two birds)

Following his return to Europe after years living in exile in America, Max Ernst chose to settle in the small hamlet of Huismes in the Loire Valley, writing shortly after the move: ‘It is beautiful and gentle and calm here’ (quoted in W. Spies and J. Drost, eds., Max Ernst: Retrospective, exh. cat., Albertina, Vienna, 2013, p. 279). It was in this verdant green landscape, surrounded by the idyllic beauty of the French countryside, that his paintings reached a new level of harmony and peace, suffused with an almost fairytale atmosphere rooted in the natural world. Seemingly illuminated from within in a vibrant mixture of soft greens, blues and bright golden tones, Untitled (Person with two birds) achieves a depth and complexity of surface that calls to mind, through relentless point and counterpoint, American post-war painting. However, though created at the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement across the Atlantic, this painting remains firmly rooted in nature through the presence of a human figure and a pair of benign avian creatures at its centre. Ernst had utilized animal imagery, and bird forms especially, throughout his career. In his mind, the animal world stood apart from our own, pure and free from the folly of human ambition, a dream-like memory of a paradise lost.