Max Ernst

Galerie Lucie Weill, Paris
Acquired by the present owner by 1989

Paris, Galerie Lucie Weill, De Picasso à Dali, 1971, no. 45
Munich, Haus der Kunst, Der Surrealismus 1922-1942, 1972, no. 154, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Musée des Art Décoratifs, Surréalisme, 1972, no. 148
London, Helly Nahmad Gallery, Max Ernst, 2006, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue

Werner Spies, Max Ernst Werke 1925-29, Cologne, 1976, vol. III, no. 1217, illustrated p. 220

The board is stable and glued to a backing board with four thin wooden supports. UV examination reveals no signs of retouching. There is a loss to the surface of the upper left corner approx 1 cm wide which appears to have been filled. There is a spot of discoloration towards the centre of the board (2mm) and some tiny nicks and losses to the extreme edges in places. Overall this work is in good condition.
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Created in 1927, at a time when Max Ernst was developing an utterly innovative painterly language entirely distinct from his contemporaries, Monument aux oiseaux utilises one of the most significant recurring motifs within the artist’s corpus, that of the bird. Ernst adopted as his alter-ego a curious bird-like figure named Loplop, whose genesis he related to a moment of profound change which occurred in his childhood when his younger sister was born: ‘1906… A friend by the name of Hornebom, an intelligent, piebald, faithful bird dies during the night; the same night a baby, number six, enters life. Confusion in the brain of this otherwise quite healthy boy  - a kind of interpretation mania, as if newborn innocence, sister Loni, had in her lust for life taken possession of the vital fluids of his favourite bird… In the boy’s mind there remains a voluntary if irrational confounding of the images of human beings with birds and other creatures; and this is reflected in the emblems of his art’ (quoted in: Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Loplop, The artist’s other self, London, 1983, p. 10).

In the celebrated opening passage of his autobiographical treatise Beyond Painting (1948), Ernst recounts a vivid dream in which striations of wood, drawn over a mahogany panel, magically transform themselves into myriad images of animals. As an archetypal Surrealist anecdote, this seemingly fantastical episode on anthropomorphic transformation would serve as a foundation for the painter’s future artistic explorations, where animal and natural imagery would become icons of his distinctive pictorial language. This concept of metamorphosis between the organic and concrete is suggested within Monument aux oiseaux, which hovers enticingly on the boundary between abstraction and figuration. The amorphous being at the centre of the composition – seemingly an almost mythical combination of human and animal – appears to dance across the picture plane, with the deep blues of the background suggesting an expanse of sea and sky. The result is a work which challenges the perceptions of the viewer whilst also offering a thrilling portal into the world of dreams and magic.