Max Ernst

Galerie Le Point Cardinal, Paris (acquired by 1962)
Brook Street Gallery, London
Galerie Jan Krugier, Geneva
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1973

Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Max Ernst, 1963, no. 204, illustrated in the catalogue

Robert Motherwell (ed.), Max Ernst, Beyond Painting and other Writings by the Artist and his Friends, The Documents of Modern Art, New York, 1948, illustration of the plaster version p. 109
Patrick Waldberg, Max Ernst, Paris, 1958, illustration of another cast p. 313 (titled Sauteur de murs and as dating from 1943)
Max Ernst Œuvre sculpté 1913-1961 (exhibition catalogue), Galerie Le Point Cardinal, Paris, 1961, no. 22, illustrated
André Ferrier, 'Max Ernst, sculpteur', in L'Œil, no. 84, December 1961, illustration of another cast p. 62
Lucy R. Lippard, 'Max Ernst and a Sculpture of Fantasy', in Art International, 20th February 1967, vol. XI, illustration of another cast p. 40
John Russell, Max Ernst, Life and Work, London, 1967, no. 139, illustration of another cast, p. 310
Uwe M. Schneede, Max Ernst, Stuttgart, 1972, no. 352, illustration of another cast p. 181
Patrick Waldberg, Les Demeures d'Hypnos, Paris, 1976, illustration of another cast p. 171
Edward Quinn, Max Ernst, Paris, 1977, no. 281, illustration of another cast p. 240
Sarane Alexandrian, Max Ernst, Paris, 1986, illustration of another cast p. 91
Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Œuvre-Katalog, Werke 1939-1953, Cologne, 1987, no. 2471,2, illustration of another cast p. 91, illustrations of the plaster and wood versions p. 90
Ulla & Heiner Pietzsch, Leben mit Kunst, Berlin, 2000, colour illustration of another cast p. 167
Susanne Kaufmann, Im Spannungsfeld von Fläche und Raum: Studien zur Wechselwirkung von Malerei und Skulptur im Werk von Max Ernst, Weimar, 2003, no. 143, illustration of another cast p. 137
Jürgen Pech, Max Ernst: Plastische Werke, Cologne, 2005, colour illustration of another cast p. 67

Deep green patina. Apart from some minor wear to the patina consistent with age, this work is in very good condition.
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Jeune homme au cœur battant was executed in the summer of 1944, during Ernst’s stay at Long Island with Dorothea Tanning. The Surrealist dealer and gallery owner Julien Levy, who joined Ernst and Tanning, reported: ‘Max and Dorothea have found an old house with any number of nooks and crannies on a solitary part of the coastline of Long Island, where we can spend the summer together. It is pleasantly situated in the small creek of Great River, on the opposite side to elegant, mondain Hampton Beach […]. Max has converted the garage into a workshop [fig. 1] and there pours plaster, which he has brought with him from Paris, into forms of astonishing simplicity and originality. He uses all kinds of tools, which he has found lying around in the garage, and even kitchen utensils’ (J. Levy, Un été à Long Island, quoted in Max Ernst: Sculptures (exhibition catalogue), Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan, 1996, p. 89).

 

Ernst's figural sculptures typically take their inspiration from fantastic characters, such as the avian creature Loplop, and their features take shape through the artist's playful manipulation of found objects. While Jeune homme au cœur battant, like his earlier sculptures, was created by the imaginative transformation of common materials, here the figure is reduced entirely to volumes and curves, with two smooth concavities replacing recognisable anatomical elements. Ernst attempted a similar simplification of form in Femme assise, created as a female counterpart to Jeune homme au cœur battant, but the figure was destroyed while still in its plaster state.

 

While stylistically unique, the production of Jeune homme au cœur battant and Femme assise typifies Ernst's ingenious craftsmanship. Jürgen Pech commented: ‘Max Ernst formed the bowed legs of the figures by placing a cylindrical bucket at an angle, inside a bowl with a flat bottom and curved edge, taking a cast of the space in between and repeating the process, once the first form had dried. The body of the male figure was taken from a cast of a slightly distorted metal box. Ernst then inserted a spoon into the top of this, while the plaster was still wet. [...] the oval form can be interpreted either as arching outwards or as bending inwards, so as to suggest the beating of a heart. [...] Max Ernst used thin curved planes for the heads of both figures, but this time took casts of weighing pans from a set of scales. The heads were attached to long necks, similar to those he had made for An Anxious Friend. Both figures were thus given volume and presence, in marked contrast to their simple clarity and light airiness’ (J. Pech in ibid., p. 93).

 

Apart from sporadic Dada reliefs and assemblages, sculpture was of minor concern to Ernst until 1934, when Alberto Giacometti exposed him to a Modern style that drew heavily from non-European sources such as African and Native American art (fig. 2). Jeune homme au cœur battant is closely related to ceremonial spoons made by the Dan people of West Africa. Ernst executed a version of Jeune homme au cœur battant in mahogany, now in the Menil Collection, Houston, and an edition of six bronzes was cast by the Modern Art Foundry in New York between 1953 and 1957. One cast is also in the Menil Collection and another, formerly in the personal collection of the artist, is now in the Max Ernst Museum, Brühl.