Max Ernst

traveling

Ineffable and visionary, Max Ernest (1891-1976) spanned seven decades of twentieth century history and art, studded with crucial events, ferments and innovations. And if art and life are closely connected, the retrospective exhibition at Palazzo Reale, curated by Martina Mazzotta and Jürgen Pech, highlights the fundamental chapters of that of the author, dividing his biographical and artistic path into four parts, presented in 9 rooms with 400 works on loan from international institutions. Eclectic and innovator, painter, sculptor, theorist and poet, Ernst escapes precise definitions and classifications. He elaborates themes between science and alchemy, philosophy and history of art, eroticism and the unconscious, nature and astronomy, in a vision beyond reality between fantastic and wonderful, alienating landscapes and metamorphic creatures; while experimenting with collage and new techniques, such as frottage, grattage, decalcomania and dripping. The exhibition follows the chronology of his movements: born in Germany, Ernst participates in the First World War; he moved to France in the 1920s; imprisoned by the French as a foreign enemy, and sought after by the Nazis as a "degenerate artist", he fled to the United States in 1941; finally he returned to Europe in 1951. With the places his path is highlighted, between art, Dada and Surrealism, with masterpieces such as “Oedipus Rex”; meetings and friendships with artists, including Arp, Breton, Paul and Gala Éluard; loves, like the one for Leonora Carrington; and weddings, from Peggy Guggenheim to Dorothea Tanning.

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