Max Ernst | Gala Éluard | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gala Éluard

Max Ernst
(French (born Germany), Brühl 1891–1976 Paris)

Date: 1924

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 32 x 25 3/4 in. (81.3 x 65.4 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, 2006

Accession Number: 2006.32.15

Not on view

Description Object Information Related Objects Online Resources Video Audio

This evocative portrait reveals the deeply intertwined personal and artistic lives of members of the Surrealist circle and depicts
the movement’s fascination with dreamlike states. Gala Éluard was muse and lover to three members of the Surrealist movement: her two husbands, poet Paul Éluard and artist Salvador Dalí, and Ernst, who painted this work based on Man Ray’s photograph of Éluard’s eyes. With curious forms rising from her unfurling forehead, Éluard becomes an imagined embodiment of Surrealism’s wide-eyed interest in art’s power to explore the mysterious territories of the unconscious mind.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Signature: Signed (upper right): Max Ernst
Provenance

Paul Eluard (born Eugène Grindel, 1895-1952), Paris; André Breton (1896-1966), Paris; Galerie Pierre (Edouard Loeb), Paris; Richard L. Feigen Gallery, Chicago, acquired from Loeb, by 1959; Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman, Chicago, acquired from Feigen, August 5, 1959 - her gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006
Exhibition History

Max Ernst, Galerie Denise René, Paris, June 2-July 2, 1945, exh. cat., no. 8.

An American Choice: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 21-September 27, 1981, exh. cat. by William S. Lieberman, pp. 7 (intro by Lieberman), 26 (Lieberman), 27 (ill.), 154.

Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, March 14-May 2, 1993; The Menil Collection, Houston, May 28-August 29, 1993; The Art Institute of Chicago, September 15-November 30, 1993, exh. cat. by William A. Camfield, no. 182, ill. pl. 169, p. 372.

Painters in Paris: 1895-1950, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 8 - December 31, 2000, exh. cat. by William S. Lieberman, pp. 98 (ill.), 123.

Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 18, 2007 - February 3, 2008, exh. cat. edited by Gary Tinterow, Lisa Mintz Messinger, and Nan Rosenthal, no. 5, pp. 24-26 (ill.; essay by Sabine Rewald).

Greenwich, Connecticut: The Bruce Museum, September 27, 2008- January 4, 2009. Paris Portraits; Artists, Friends, and Lovers, cat. no. 14, pg. 96.
References

Werner Spies, Max Ernst - Collagen, Inventar und Widerspruch (Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1974), p. 72, ill. fig. 193.

Werner Spies, with Sigrid and Gunter Metken, Max Ernst Oeuvre Katalog, Werke 1906-1925 (Houston: Menil Foundation, and Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1975), p. 410, no. 788 (ill.).

Grace Glueck, "Met is Given a $12 Million Art Collection," New York Times, December 10, 1980, p. 21.

Anonymous, "Chicagoan Gives Art to N.Y. Museum," Chicago Sun-Times, December 11, 1980, p. 8.

Hilton Kramer, "Modernist Show Moves Met Firmly into Art of 20th Century," New York Times, May 22, 1981, p. C21.

Roberta Smith, "Spacewalk," Village Voice, June 10-16, 1981, p. 89 (erroneously called a Magritte).