MAX ERNST | Trois cyprès faciles

Maurice Lefèbvre-Foinet, Paris (a gift from the artist circa 1949-50)
Private Collection, Paris (by descent from the above and sold: Christie's, London, June 29, 2000, lot 329)
Acquired at the above sale

Paris, Galerie René Drouin, Max Ernst, 1950, no. 46
Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Max Ernst, 1962-63, no. 82
Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum & Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Max Ernst, 1969-70, nos. 72, 68 & 84

Werner Spies, Sigrid & Günter Metken, Max Ernst, Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1939-1953, Cologne, 1987, no. 2687, illustrated p. 202 

The canvas is unlined. There is some craquelure throughout the composition. Under UV light, certain original pigments fluoresce. There are some extremely fine lines of inpainting visible scattered within the dark background at upper and lower right as well as a nailhead stroke within the blue pigment toward the upper left corner. The work is in good condition.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Ernst painted Trois cyprès faciles during the creative height of his years in the United States, a period very much informed by the influence of the expansive and geologically complex Southwestern landscape. The artist spent ample time in Arizona with his partner Dorothea Tanning, moving to Sedona in 1946. Ernst was thrilled to find that the fantastical landscapes and vegetation he had imagined in his works of the 1920s and 30s were echoed in actuality in Arizona. Discussing the significant inspiration of these surroundings for Ernst, John Russell wrote: "Arizona offered isolation, a celestial climate, a way of life that was both economical and free from suburban constraints. It offered the inspiration of supreme, natural beauty... Few things are more stirring than the fantastic forms and the irrational colouring of the mountains around Sedona. In the mid-1940s life and landscape in that region had an uncorrupted quality which made of Arizona a Promised Land in which a new life could be begun and an old one discarded...and although Max Ernst had never been a landscape painter, in the ordinary sense, it was deeply moving for him to come upon a landscape which had precisely the visionary quality that he had sought for on canvas" (John Russell, Max Ernst: Life and Work, New York, 1967, p. 140).

This phase of Ernst’s oeuvre was dominated by the technique of decalcomania, explored in the present work to a powerful effect. Invented by Oscar Dominguez in 1935, this process immediately became as important a Surrealist technique as automatic writing, collage and Ernst's signature frottage and grattage (see fig. 1). The technique of decalcomania consists of covering the canvas with a layer of pigment and then pressing onto it with a smooth surface such as glass. A rich surface pattern that emerges as a result has the appearance of corals, rocks or imaginary creatures. As described in the text of the major Max Ernst retrospective at the Tate in 1991, “Decalcomania was what might be termed an intersubjective method, comparable to the automatic writing, the dream protocols and the cadavres exquis of the late 1920s. Yet with Max Ernst, the game led to a marvellous expansion of his visionary world...employed with great sophistication and supplemented by interpretative additions by hand” (Max Ernst (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1991, p. 230).

Celebrated author Henry Miller wrote of Ernst's fantastical landscapes: “The chimaeras, the unearthly vegetation, the symbolic episodes, the haunting passages which lead us in the twinkling of an eye from the fabulous to the invisible and frightening realities, in the pictures which Max Ernst has been giving us for the last twenty years, are not dream images any more than they are accidents. They are the product of an inventive mind endeavoring to translate in worldly language experiences which belong to another dimension. If they are horror-laden sometimes it is not in the familiar nightmarish sense which we are accustomed to ascribe to the functional processes of the night mind. They are compact with wonder and mystery, awesomely real. A glow emanates from them which arises neither from the day world nor the night world” (Henry Miller, “Another Bright Messenger” in View, no. 1, April 1942, New York).