Bird-Head (Oiseau-tête)’s bronze, rectangular form features two round ovals and a pyramidal shape that protrude from the flat plane as if in the shape of a face. At the top, a bird’s head with a sharp beak juts forward. The composition appears to mimic a “Loniake” (or “Koniake”), a type of plank mask created by the Toussian people from Burkina Faso. Although there is no documented evidence that Ernst studied Loniake, the masks are also flat, rectangular forms with geometric patterns and carved hornbill heads. When he created this sculpture, Ernst was living in Paris and collecting African art.
520: Présence Africaine, 2025
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Dorothea Tanning Ernst
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1983
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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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Présence Africaine
Gallery 520In the 1930s and 1940s, Paris was a mecca for Black artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals from around the world.
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