ERNSTERNSTERNST – Three Generations, One Family

Max Ernst (1891-1976) is one of the leading figures of 20th century art and deeply rooted in DIE GALERIE’s programme. Uniting all the different development stages of Dadaism and Surrealism, he left behind an oeuvre rich in contradictions and leaps, into which his interest in psychoanalysis and cosmology found its way just as much as ethnology or the myths of humanity. His talent, passion and creativity also went down to his successors: Jimmy Ernst (1920-1984), son from his first marriage, had already emigrated to the USA before his father. He had already learned to paint autodidactically before, and from the 1940s he established himself as an abstract painter and significant member of the young American Abstract Expressionists. With the work of Jimmy Ernst’s daughter Amy Ernst (*1953), the threads of art history merge into those of contemporary art. After studying stage design, Amy Ernst dedicated herself to printmaking and developed her unmistakable artistic concept in compositions combining collage and frottage techniques with photographic methods, thus creating highly associative works between landscape and figure.

With the exhibition ERNSTERNSTERNST. THREE GENERATIONS, ONE FAMILY, DIE GALERIE does not seek to portray Max Ernst’s dependence or influence on his closest circle, but rather to focus on the work of the single artists in their individual confrontation with their own biography and ideas.