Max Ernst, Jimmy Ernst, Amy Ernst

Max Ernst (1891-1976) ranks among the leading characters of 20th century art and is deeply rooted in the program of DIE GALERIE. No other artist has been able to elude a precise definition in his work the way he did. Blending all the different stages of Dadaism and Surrealism, he left behind an oeuvre rich in contradictions and leaps, into which his interest in psychoanalysis and cosmology found its way just as much as ethnology or the myths of humanity. His talent, passion and creativity also went down to his successors: Jimmy Ernst (1920-1984), only son from his first wife Louise.

Installation View

Straus-Ernst, had already emigrated to the USA before his father. Having learned autodidactically how to paint, he established himself as an abstract artist and influential member of the young American Abstract Expressionists from the 1940s onwards. His mature paintings from the 1950s and 1960s reflect the aesthetics of the atomic age, evoking crystals or cobwebs, intricate labyrinths and Gothic cathedrals, the art and culture of Native Americans as well as that of African Americans in New York City.

Through the work of Jimmy Ernst‘s daughter Amy Ernst (*1953), the threads of modern art history merge with those of contemporary art. After studying theatre and stage design, Amy Ernst turned to printmaking and found her distinctive artistic expression in wonderful compositions made of and on different kinds of paper, combining collage and frottage techniques with photographic methods to create highly associative artworks between landscape and figure.

With its exhibition ERNSTERNSTERNST · THREE GENERATIONS, ONE FAMILY, DIE GALERIE does not aim to portray the dependency or influence of Max Ernst on his closest family, but to emphasise the individual work of each artist in their personal engagement with their own particular life and ideas.

DIE GALERIE
Grüneburgweg 12, 60323 Frankfurt am Main
+49 69 97 14 71 0

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