André Breton called Max Ernst “the man of infinite possibilities”.

A major figure in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, Max Ernst drew inspiration throughout his life as an artist from a wide variety of fields, including philosophy, psychoanalysis, science, literature and poetry, all of which helped him transcribe his dreamlike vision and boundless imagination.
Erudite and experimental, a true jack-of-all-trades in art, Max Ernst invented various artistic techniques such as roman-collage, rubbing, scratching and decalcomania.

Our gouache, Fleur-Coquille, excuted around 1932, is part of a vast series, evoking the fusion of mineral and vegetable, marine and terrestrial, that the painter initiated in 1927. 
These imaginary, hybrid “Shell Flowers” have no physical identity of their own, as William Camfield pointed out in 1993 in his study of Max Ernst. The artist was inspired by illustrations of botanical specimens and plant forms found in educational works, before metamorphosing them into these “strange plant creatures evolving in a supernatural landscape” (W. Camfield, Max Ernst Dada and the dawn of Surrealism, Munich, 1993, p. 157).

Our still life is on the verge of pure abstraction. To give more materiality to his hybrid creations, Ernst combined them with large, luminous, contrasting flat tints of color and undulating shapes.

Works from this series belong to important museum collections such as :

Max ERNST
Fleur-coquille, 1927
Oil on canvas
Thyssen- Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Max ERNST
Fleur de coquillages, 1929    
Oil on canvas                   
MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Inv. N° R19P