Max Ernst was a painter and sculptor born in Germany in 1891. His father, Philipp Ernst, a rigorous and disciplined painter, introduced him to painting at an early age. He learned to draw during walks in the forest, one of the sources of inspiration for the fantastic landscapes he would later paint.                                                                                                                                
In 1909, Ernst enrolled at the University of Bonn to study philosophy and art history. He soon gave up, however, preferring to turn to painting. In 1911, he met the members of the Blaue Reiter group, with whom he exhibited in Berlin in 1913. The first paintings he presented revealed his Cubist, Futurist and Expressionist influences.

Although self-taught, Max Ernst was influenced by many artists, including Van Gogh and August Macke. The paintings of Giorgio de Chirico gave him a strong interest in dream imagery and the fantastic.
Max Ernst drew on his childhood and wartime experiences to paint scenes that were often absurd and apocalyptic. The First World War provoked in him a strong sense of disillusionment and the birth of a spirit of revolt against convention. All this led him to take a close interest in the Dada movement. After the war, Marx Ernst returned to Germany and helped Jean Arp and Johannes Thomas Baargeld found a Dada group in Cologne. At the same time, wishing to devote himself to art criticism, he maintained close links with Parisian avant-garde groups. And in 1919, he created his first collages using banal materials such as scientific manuals and illustrated catalogs. Marx Ernst would use these to create fantastic new images from the world of dreams and the subconscious.

In 1922, Max Ernst moved to Paris, where he lived until 1941. He joined the Montparnasse artistic community and the Surrealist group. During this period, Ernst concentrated on the field of dreams and the absurd. This research and experimentation led him to create a fantastic bestiary, zany machinery... With his Surrealist colleagues, he discovered the possibilities of autonomism and dreams. Sometimes, he carried out his artistic research using hypnosis or hallucinogenic substances.
These experiments and his audacity led him to become one of the leading figures of Surrealism. He created work processes that went beyond technical constraints. He invented frottage and didn't hesitate to scrape pigments onto his canvases.

Max Ernst also developed a great fascination for birds, which dominate his work. This fascination led him to create Loplop, an alter ego. He first appeared in 1928 in “Loplop, le supérieur des oiseaux”.
Marx Ernst's research prompted him to try out new media of expression: murals, film (L'Âge d'or, 1930). In 1934, the artist began sculpting models of creatures from his personal mythology, a prime example being Le Roi jouant à la reine (The King Playing Queen), 1944.

At the start of the Second World War, Max Ernst fled France with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, who later became his wife. He arrived in New York in 1941. There he rubbed shoulders with avant-garde painters such as Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall. He later invented the dripping technique, splashing paint onto canvas. In 1953, he moved to Paris and the following year won the Venice Biennales. With the success that followed, his finances improved. In 1963, he moved to Seillans, in the Amboise region.
Max Ernst died in Paris in 1976. His work and methods influenced many artists, including Pollock. Today, he is a major figure for artists interested in technique, psychology and the emancipation of thought.