Description
A collection of prints by leading Dada
and Surrealist artist, Max Ernst, assembled by Ernst O.E. Fischer and comprising 164 sheets.
Approximately 66 additional pieces in bound books are now part of the Library's core
collection. It constitutes a comprehensive selection of the artist's graphic oeuvre and
includes a number of unique examples.
Background
Max Ernst, a leading Dada and Surrealist artist, was born in Brühl, Germany on April 2,
1891. He co-founded the Cologne branch of the Dada movement in 1919 with Johannes Baargeld
("Johnny Money" née Alfred Grünewald) and mounted the first Dada exhibition in Cologne that
same year. His interest in technical and technological experimentation in all mediums is
perhaps most evident in his graphic work. Ernst had little formal instruction in the arts,
other than from his father, a self-taught amateur artist. Ernst chose instead to study
philosophy and art history at the University of Bonn, beginning in 1910 until his enlistment
in the army in August, 1914. In his graphic work, following a small series of linoleum cuts
from 1912 and a recently discovered (1985) woodcut from 1917, he entirely abandoned
traditional relief printing, the preferred medium of the Expressionists, in favor of
intaglio and planographic methods. These methods enabled him to employ collage elements
through the use of transfer and photographic technologies in combination with the more
traditional techniques.