The mysterious imagery of this painting recalls Ernst’s interest in exploiting the visual language of science (and specifically biology and geology) in his Dada overpaintings and collages of the late 1910s and 1920s. Although a specific source image has not been identified, the impression is of a highly magnified cross section of some sort of plant ovary or botanical specimen, writ large and translated into oil on canvas. The precision of Ernst’s lines, some in graphite pencil, contrast with his soft blending of pigments, which surround the elliptically erotic central motif with a luminous glow.
Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, September 23, 2017-January 1, 2018.
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Art of This Century Gallery, New York
Mrs. Patricia Kane Matisse, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired from Mrs. Pierre Matisse, New York. Gift and purchase, 1968
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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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