| German-French painter, born in Bruhl, Rineland, died in Paris. He studied philosophy in Bonn, where he met August Macke and Jean Arp. After the First World War, he joined the Dada movement in Cologne. In France between 1924 and 1938, he was a member of the Surrealists. He began his early "collages" in 1920. Then, in 1925, he discovered "frottage," which consisted of rubbing graphite on a piece of paper placed on a piece of wood with tortuous veins, from which a barbaric bestiary emerged. Next he extended his technique to all sorts of materials, including leaves and frayed canvas, to express his Surrealistic reveries. he is the inventor of the "romans collages" -- Collage, Novel: The 100 Headed Woman, 1929, and Une semaine de bonte, 1934. In his sculpture, Ernst gives form to the creations of his own personal mythology: The King Playing the Queen, 1944; Capricorn, 1948. He went to the United States as a refugee during the Second World War, after which he returned to France. In 1954 he received the grand prize in painting at the Biennale in Venice. |
