Max Ernst

Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Max Ernst, 1962-63, no. 100
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Max Ernst, 1974, no. 36, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Paysages après l'impressionnisme, 1975, no. 27
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Max Ernst, Landschaften, 1985, no. 41, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Max Ernst, 1986, no. 64
London, Gallery Runkel-Hue-Williams Ltd., Max Ernst, Paintings, Sculptures, Works on Paper, 1988-89, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
New York, The Elkon Gallery, Max Ernst, Sunset and Twilights (the Postwar Years), 1989-90, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

La Mare aux grenouilles ('The Frog Pond') was painted shortly after Ernst's return to France in 1955, after his long exile in Arizona. He remained in Europe for the rest of his life, and adopted French citizenship in 1958. The present work is stylistically related to another painting made shortly after his arrival in France, Les Grenouilles ne chantent pas rouge ('Frogs don't sing red', 1956, Menil Collection, Houston), and it may well have been this course of events which prompted Ernst to incorporate the motif of the frog in his work, this symbol of his happy return France.

In La Mare aux grenouilles, Ernst recalls his important series of jungles scenes painted in the mid to late 1930s, which had originally by inspired by his visits to the jungles of Indochina in the company of Paul and Gala Eluard in 1924. While the present work would seem to be composed of an abstract mass of prickly vegetation, and as such can be related to the work of his contemporaries such as the Dubuffet's Tableaux d'assemblage, closer inspection does reveal certain recognisable elements of landscape. A dark blue band along the lower edge is the surface of the pond of the title, and in the distance through the vegetation shines the full moon, illuminating the scene and the little frog perched in the lower right corner.

The present work shows the use of the technique of grattage, first developed by Ernst in the mid-1920s as a painterly response to the Surrealist concept of automatism. Grattage is a development in oil paint of frottage, the technique he first employed in pencil and paper: 'One rainy day in 1925 Ernst was first inspired to explore the possibilities of frottage by the look of the grooves in the well-scrubbed floor of his hotel room at the seashore in Pornic. Attracted by the open structure of the grain, he rubbed it, using paper and pencil, and then reinterpreted the results. As he developed the procedure, he used a variety of new elements to start with - stale bread crumbs, grained leather, striated glassware, a straw hat, twine - always transforming the results so that whatever lay beneath his paper experienced a metamorphosis. The characteristics of these objects got lost in the process. Unrefined textures turned into more precise shapes. The grain of wood became the tossing surface of the sea, the scaly pattern of the weave of a straw hat became a cypress tree, the texture of twine became another kind of grain even a horse. At first Ernst carried out his rubbings with paper and pencil. Soon, however, he began to explore new effects obtained by pursuing grattage, a variant of frottage executed in the medium of painting. In grattage, objects are placed beneath a surface covered with a thin layer of pigment, which the artist scrapes away with a spatula or palette knife... these works are sensual and tactile, with images of rubbed objects that appear as ghostly traces of form' (W. Spies, 'Nightmare and Deliverence' in Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), New York, 2005, pp. 12-13).