VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Menil Collection presents the exhibition Max Ernst: In the Garden of Nymph Ancolie.

Organized by the Museum Tinguely, Basel, and supplemented in Houston by work from The Menil Collection, this exhibition is conceived around the mural, Pétales et jardin de la nymphe Ancolie.

The surrealist work, with a bird-like figure emerging from monumental curling red flower petals, was painted by German-born artist Max Ernst (1891-1976) in 1934 for the wall of a night club in Zurich. It is the only existing mural by the artist that has survived in its entirety and The Menil Collection will be the first venue to showcase the mural in its fully restored state.

For this exhibition approximately 75 important and rarely exhibited paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Ernst from the early 1930s to the late 1940s will be shown.

Within this timeframe, Ernst explores themes of Eros and nature's irreconcilable relationship with culture and technology in surreal landscapes of dense foliage. Coming out of the wartime culture in WWII Europe, the work is deeply telling of a social anxiety that undercuts the deceptively seductive and magical “joie de vivre” sprit of the mural.

In many ways, the work reflects modern art's response to an increasingly hostile political climate. For instance, in one series of paintings in the exhibition, “Jardin gobe-avions,” patristic clusters of colorful vegetation consume airplane parts.

As one of the most important innovators in the history of modern art, Ernst forged a complex oeuvre that is unified by a delight in manipulating meaning through formal experimentations and adaptations of traditional and existing artistic techniques.

Autonomist and chance-based techniques that Ernst invented; including collage, decalcomania, grattage and frottage, will be presented through works on paper, sculpture, and paintings.

Pictured: Max Ernst, detail of Pétales et jardin de la nymphe Ancolie, 1934, Kunsthaus Zürich, © 2008 Max Ernst/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.