Max Ernst

German painter, sculptor, and author Max Ernst (1891-1976) was one of the most enthusiastic leaders of the Dada movement in Cologne and later was closely associated with Surrealism.

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Ernst's Surrealist paintings are steeped in Freudian metaphor, private mythology, and childhood memories. One of his major themes centered on the image of the bird, which often incorporated human elements. He embraced the use of collage, frottage, and decalcomania in his diverse works and published a series of purely pictorial novels created from collaged found images.

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Fun fact: “frottage,” a graphic art technique that uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images, and “grattage,” a technique, in which paint is scraped across the canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed underneath, were both invented by Ernst!