Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"Son the renowned Dada and Surrealist master, Max Ernst, Jimmy (born Hans-Ulrich Ernst) spent his childhood amidst a community that was revolutionizing art and literature on the eve of World War ll. He arrived in the United States at age eighteen, alone and penniless, with no knowledge of English and was subsequently rescued by wealthy socialite and art patron Peggy Guggenheim.
Although Ernst had no formal art training, he studied printing and typography at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Altona, Germany, and served there as a printing apprentice. He began painting shortly after arriving in the United States in 1938. Over the course of four decades he developed a style that was at once spare and complex, emotive and elegant, precisely crafted with subtle effects of space and motion. His work has been described as ""abstract Surrealist,"" but his style has undergone a number of changes. Surrealist influences were strong in his earliest work. In the late 1940s he went through a ""jazz"" period. Then he abandoned color altogether. During the 1960s his pictures had brilliantly opposed colors. Of his work the artist said, . . l prefer to think of my work as a thought or an idea which exists or fails without the necessity of elaboration or definition.""
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