Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet who lived from 1891 to 1976. A prolific artist, he was a pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe, and although he had no formal artistic training, his experimental attitude toward making art led him to invent frottage, a technique using pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images, and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of objects placed beneath. He is noted for unconventional drawing methods and for creating novels and pamphlets using collage, had a fascination with birds that recurs through his work in his alter ego Loplop, and served as a soldier for four years during the First World War, an experience that left him shocked and critical of the modern world. During the Second World War he was designated an undesirable foreigner while living in France. Born in Bruhl, he began painting in 1909 while studying at the University of Bonn, later joined the Rhenish Expressionists group, and eventually settled in France, where he achieved financial success in the 1950s and died in Paris in 1976. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/