About Max Ernst

Of German birth (1891-1976), he became one of the leading modernist painters in Europe in the early and mid 20th century. Many of his paintings reflect the terror that he experienced during World War II as well as the style of Surrealism that he adopted from French influences.

In 1939, he was interned in a French prison camp on the false accusation that he was spying. He escaped, only to discover that his lover Leonora Carrington had had an emotional breakdown and had sold his house for a bottle of brandy, leaving him homeless. Shortly after he successfully sought refuge in the United States and during 1943, visited Sedona, Arizona with Dorothea Tanning.