MAX ERNST | LE FANTÔME DE LA REPOPULATION

Jean-Placide Mauclaire, Paris

Private Collection, Paris (by descent from the above and sold: Sotheby's, London, February 5, 2002, lot 33)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Max Ernst, La Femme de 100 têtes, Paris, 1929, illustration of the collage pl. 120

Werner Spies, Max Ernst—Collagen, Cologne, 1974, no. 282, illustration of the collage n.p.

Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1975, illustration of the collage p. 145

Werner Spies, Sigrid & Günter Metken, Max Ernst, Werke, 1925-1929, Cologne, 1976, illustration of the collage p. 380

Max Ernst: Frottagen, Collagen, Zeichnungen, Graphik, Bücher (exhibition catalogue), Kunsthaus, Zurich & traveling, 1979, illustration of the collage n.p.

Gilbert Lascault, Sur la planète Max Ernst, Paris, 1991, illustration of the collage p. 90

This work is a unique photographic enlargement made by the artist of a collage titled Et les papillons se mettent à chanter created for his first collage-novel La Femme 100 têtes, published in 1929 with a foreword by André Breton. This photograph was exhibited, along with works by Dalí, Miró and Man Ray, at the premiere of Luis Buñuel's film L'Âge d'or an event that was ransacked by an extremist group opposed to the ideas of Surrealism, and was one of the few pieces to survive the destruction. The splatters of green ink on the photograph are likely to be the result of this vandalism.