Max Ernst

Dominique de Menil, Houston (acquired directly from the artist)
Thence by decent

Hamburg, Kunsthalle; Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft; Frankfurt, Kunstverein; Berlin, Akademie der Kunste; Koln, Kunsthalle; Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries; Marseille, Musée Cantini; Grenoble, Maison de la Culture; Strasbopurg, Ancienne Douane; Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Houston, Rice Museum; Kansas City, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery & Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts & Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Max Ernst, Das innere Gesicht—Max Ernst, Inside the Sight, An exhibition of Max Ernst Paintings from the Menil Family Collection, 1970-74, no. 67, illustrated in the catalogue

Edward Quinn, Max Ernst, Paris, 1976, no. 385, illustrated p. 315
John Russell, Max Ernst, Life and Work, Cologne, 1996, no. 116
Werner Spies & Sigrid & Günter Metken, Max Ernst Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1954-1963, Cologne, 1998, no. 3470, illustrated p. 218

This work is in excellent condition. The canvas is not lined. The colors are incredibly bright and the surface is nicely textured. There is a 1/8 inch long dot of flyspeck near the lower left corner. Some extremely minor shrinkage to areas of the thickest blue pigment. Under UV light no inpainting is apparent.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Resonant in this painting is the dialogue between accidental abstraction and detailed naturalism—a tension that fascinated Ernst from his earliest moments as an artist. Amid the textured explosions of color, Ernst incorporates recognizable features of the Arizona terrain, from the distant ridge to rock formations in the immediate foreground to the incised sun and the exquisitely evoked flora. He envelops these details in a mineral landscape of decalcomania. By the late 1930s, Ernst had fully developed this technique from his earlier innovations of frottage and grattage. Werner Spies describes decalcomania as a method, "which involves the spreading of paint on a sheet, laying a second sheet on top of the first, pressing it in places, and then lifting it up to leave suggestive images... in general the images are fluid. They represent no known world but rather seem to devour one another and evolve in an endless metamorphosis, evoking some vegetal or cosmic process..." (Werner Spies, "Nightmare and Deliverance" in Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, pp. 13-14).