Max Ernst ( 1891-1976) • Was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet. • Was born in Bruhl, Germany • The third of nine children of middle class Catholic family. • His father was a teacher of the deaf and an amateur painter. • 1909: studied in the University of Bonn and became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill patients after visiting Asylums. • 1911-1913: joined with the group of artists where works by Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin and who inspired and influenced him. • 1914- 1918: served both Western and the Eastern front in the army during world war I, met Hans Arp and became friends and their relationship lasted for forty year. • 1918: returned to Cologne and married art history student Luise Straus, but their marriage was short-lived, ended in 1921- they have a son, Ulrich Jimmy Ernst, was born 1920 , who also became a painter. • 1922: illegally entered France, settled into a menage a trois with Eluard and his wife Gala in Paris • Took various odd jobs to make a living and continued to paint. • 1924: left Paris for long trips from Monaco to Saigon, Vietnam, sold a large number of his works. • 1925: returned to Paris, signed a contract with Jacques Viot and established a studio at rue Tourlaque. • Invented a graphic art technique called frontage( Surrealism techniques) and created the grattage technique. • 1934 : began to make sculpture. • 1938: the American heiress and artistic Patron peggy Guggenheim acquired a number of his works which she displayed in her museum in London. • 1939: world war II , after the NAZI occupied France, he was arrested again, but escaped and flee to America with help of Guggenheim and Fry. • 1941: arrived in the United States, left his second wife Leonora Carrington and she suffered a major mental breakdown. • Guggenheim and Ernst were married (1941-1946) • Lived in New York city and helped inspire the development of Abstract expressionism. • 1946: met and married Dorothea tanning , was American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet who was born and raised in Illinois. • 1948: they made their home in Sedona , Arizona and he began achieved financial success. • 1953: they moved to a small town in the South of France ,continued to work and published a complete catalogue of his works • 1966: created a chess set made of glass which he named “Immortel” • 1976: died on April 1976 in Paris.