馬克斯·恩斯特

Peter Schamoni, Munich (a gift from the artist)
Acquired from the above by the family of the present owners

Tokyo, The Seibu Museum of Art & Kobe, Museum of Modern Art Hyogo, Exhibition of Works by Max Ernst, 1977, no. 188, illustrated in the catalogue
Neustadt, Kunstverein, Max Ernst, Abfälle vom Werk, Originale und Grafik aus der Sammlung Peter Schamoni, 1978, illustrated in the catalogue

Peter Schamoni, Max Ernst Maximiliana, die widerrechtliche Ausübung der Astronomie, Munich, 1974, illustrated in colour p. 84
Werner Spies, Max Ernst, Œuvre-Katalog, Werke 1954-1963, Cologne, 1998, no. 3638, illustrated p. 305

The panel is stable and there is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. This work is in excellent original condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the red is slightly deeper in the original.
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Ernst returned to Paris in the early 1950s with a spirit of optimism renewed by Europe’s post-war recovery. Hochzeit von Himmel und Erde - Variation in Blau und Rot dates from this important period, in which earlier themes intersect with Ernst’s mature artistic sensibility. During this period Ernst became fascinated by astronomy and produced a number of works influenced by this new interest. He was drawn to the romanticism of the unknown, a notion that had sparked much of his artistic exploration. In the present work the rising sun is partially eclipsed by a blue moon, richly textured in a manner reminiscent of his ground-breaking decalcomania paintings from the 1930s and 40s.


Two years after painting the present work, Ernst published Maximiliana ou l’Exercise illégal de l’astronomie - a series of illustrations in homage to the great nineteenth-century astronomer, Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel. Werner Spies describes this work as indicative of Ernst's complex mentality: ‘Maximiliana focuses on the last twenty years of Tempel's life, when he travelled through Europe seeking an observatory in which he could pursue his work, looking into the vast realm of interstellar space in a time dominated by narrow minds. His was a life and a quest marked by war, flight, and exile, a life and a quest whose parallels with Ernst's own are obvious and strong. These parallels offered Ernst an opportunity to create a biography that was also an autobiography. In the spirals and mists of Tempel's nebulae, he discerned the Surrealist's romantic worldview expressed in Breton's term “explosante-fixe". In his homage to Tempel, Ernst drew together and united the threads of Dada protest and the Surrealists' triumph over violence’ (W. Spies, ‘Nightmare and Deliverance’, in Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p. 18). Hochzeit von Himmel und Erde - Variation in Blau und Rot provides a stunning demonstration of the astronomical concepts that captivated Max Ernst’s imagination during these years.


The first owner of the present work was the film director Peter Schamoni, who received it as a gift from the artist. In 1991 his critically acclaimed documentary Max Ernst: Mein Vagabundieren – Meine Unruhe premiered in Germany. The film chronicled the life and work of the artist - from his four years as a soldier to the desert of Arizona – with contributions from Ernst himself. In the voiceover the artist characterised his career as a process of becoming lost amidst the upheavals of his life and the calamitous events of the 20th Century, and emphasised the importance of choosing never to attempt to find his former self again. Hochzeit von Himmel und Erde - Variation in Blau und Rot was subsequently acquired by the family of the present owners from Schamoni and has remained with them to the present day.