Abstract Composition
Max Ernst French, born Germany
Not on view
Ernst is most closely associated with Dada and Surrealism: artistic and literary movements in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s that prized the irrational and the unconscious over order and reason. Among the techniques favored by these artists were ones that welcomed the hand of chance. This work demonstrates Ernst’s invention of grattage, in which he covered a canvas with a layer of pigment and scraped it with a palette knife to reveal imprints of objects placed underneath. Ernst continued to work this canvas, scraping the surface with a painter’s comb to reveal earlier paint layers and stamping new patterns atop the dried paint.
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