MAX ERNST. BIRDCAGE, FEATHER AND SUN, 1963 LITHOGRAPH.

color lithograph. Birdcage, feather and sun. Signed and dated 63 in the stone lower right. After a collage. From René Char/Max Ernst Dent prompte. Mourlot, Paris. 46x38cm. Framed with passe-partout behind glass. Frame dimensions: 65 x 73 cm.
Max Ernst (born April 2, 1891 in Brühl (Rhineland); † April 1, 1976 in Paris, France), actually Maximilian Maria Ernst,#1 was an important painter, graphic artist and sculptor of German origin, who received the American in 1948 and the was granted French citizenship.#2 After military service in World War I, he founded the Cologne Dada group in 1919 together with Johannes Baargeld and Hans Arp. In 1922 he left his family and moved to Paris, where he joined the circle of surrealists around André Breton and became one of the most important artistic members of the surrealist movement. At the beginning of the Second World War he was interned several times in France from 1939, was able to flee together with the art patron Peggy Guggenheim, who later became his third wife, and, like many other European artists, chose the USA as exile in 1941. In 1953 he returned to France with his fourth wife, the painter Dorothea Tanning.

With his paintings, collages and sculptures, the artist created enigmatic image combinations, bizarre creatures, often depicting birds, and fantastic landscapes. In addition to his artistic work, Max Ernst wrote poems and autobiographical as well as art-theoretical writings. Artist books take up a large part of his work. The techniques frottage, grattage and drip painting, developed as oscillation, go back to him. Used by Jackson Pollock, drip painting became part of American abstract expressionism.