Max Ernst
Frontispiece from Monsieur Aa l'antiphilosophe: Volume I from L'Antitête
1947–49, published 1949
Etching and aquatint from an illustrated book with 23 etchings (15 with aquatint, eight with drypoint and pochoir)
Not on view
The Anti-Head is a three-volume anthology of poems by Tristan Tzara, the Romanian poet whom Ernst had first befriended through the Dada movement. Ernst’s etchings for the book’s first volume signal a shift in his approach to printmaking after World War II, when he began using sinuous lines to generate biomorphic faces, figures, and bird- and fish-like forms. Tzara had created the titular “Mr. Aa the Anti-Philosopher” early in his career as a mocking, self-referential embodiment of Dada’s antiestablishment ideals.
Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, September 23, 2017-January 1, 2018.
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Max Ernst
French and American, born Germany. 1891–1976 234 works onlineA key member of first Dada and then Surrealism in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, Max Ernst used a variety of mediums—painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and various unconventional drawing methods—to give visual form to both personal memory and collective myth.
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