Max Ernst Quotes about Art

Max Ernst was a famous German-born painter, sculptor and printmaker associated with the Surrealism and Dada art movements. He is best known for his experimental artworks and unusual written works. Famous Max Ernst artworks include “Ubu Imperator”, “The Elephant Celebes”, “Forest and Dove”, “The Robing of the Bride”, “Napoleon in the Wilderness”, “Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale”, “The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter”, “The Barbarians”, “Forest and Sun” and “The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses”.

Mini biography: Born Maximilian Maria Ernst on the 2nd of April, 1891 in Brühl, Germany. His mother was Luise Kopp and his father Philipp Ernst was a teacher. Ernst married Luise Straus in 1918 and they had one child: Jimmy Ernst. They divorced in 1927. He married Marie-Berthe Aurenche in 1927 until 1942. His third wife was Peggy Guggenheim (1941 through to 1946). He then married Dorothea Tanning in 1946. The artist died on the 1st of April, 1976 in Paris, France at the age of 84. Max Ernst is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

List of Famous Max Ernst Art Quotes

A painter may know what he doesn’t want. But woe be to him if he desires to know what he wants. A painter is lost if he finds himself. Max Ernst considers his sole virtue to be that he has managed not to find himself. Max Ernst

Art has nothing to do with taste, art is not there to be ‘tasted’. Yet a certain mayor believes that art exists to be ‘judged’, and the most modern art to be ‘judged from a business point of view’. That such an original thought could emerge from a mayor’s brain! What the mayor wants is exactly what the critics of the large and small dailies actually do. They set out to judge art. That is a very pleasant occupation, because no matter how wrong a judgment may be, you never have to revise it. Max Ernst

What is a forest? A marvelous insect. A drawing-board, what do forests do? They never go to bed early. They are waiting for the tailor. What is the high season of the forests? It is the future. Max Ernst

The 2nd of April (1891) at 9:45 a.m. Max Ernst had his first contact with the sensible world, when he came out of the egg which his mother had laid in an eagle’s nest and which the bird had brooded for seven years. Max Ernst

Letting pieces of paper drop at random on the floor, he rubbed over them with a black pencil. On careful inspection of the impressions made in this way, he was surprised by the sudden increase they produced in his visionary abilities. His curiosity was aroused. He was delighted, and began making the same type of inquiry into all sorts of materials, whatever caught his eye – leaves with their ribs, the frayed edges of sacking, the strokes of a palette knife in a ‘modern’ painting, thread rolling off a spool, and so forth. Max Ernst

Max Ernst Surreal Painting

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