The house angel
| The House Angel (First Version) |
|---|
| Max Ernst , 1937 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 54 × 74 cm |
|
Theo Wormland Foundation , Pinakothek der Moderne , Munich
Link to the picture |
The Hausengel or L'Ange du foyer is a surrealist painting by Max Ernst , which shows a floating monster over a flat landscape and was created in 1937 in Paris in three variations. The second version shows only the head, the third and largest version L'Ange du foyer ou le Triomphe du surréalisme ( The House Angel or the Triumph of Surrealism ) shows a reduction of the motif to the monster and its attacker.
background
Ernst's paintings were created under the influence of the Spanish Civil War . The Spanish city of Gernika was largely destroyed by the German Condor Legion on April 26, 1937 . Pablo Picasso painted his famous anti-war picture Guernica on the occasion of the event .
Max Ernst later commented on the creation of the works: “One picture I painted after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain is the house angel . This is of course an ironic title for a kind of trample that destroys and annihilates everything that comes in its way. That was my impression at the time of what was going to be going on in the world, and I was right about it. "
The title was inspired by Léon Mathot (1886–1968), whose film L'Ange du foyer premiered on February 26, 1937 in Paris. He recorded Robert de Flers ' three-act comedy, which had its world premiere on March 19, 1905, also in Paris.
The first version of the house angel was published in 2008/09 in an exhibition of the German Historical Museum under the title Kassandra . Visions of Doom 1914-1945 shown in Berlin. The exhibits consisted of works by artists affected by exile and persecution. In 1937, the year the paintings were made, two of his paintings were shown in the Munich exhibition “Degenerate Art” . After several arrests, Max Ernst fled from Nazi- occupied France to the United States in 1941 .
description
| L'Ange du foyer ou Le Triomphe du surréalisme (Third version) |
|---|
| 1937 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 114 × 146 cm |
| Privately owned
Link to the picture |
The monster is depicted from below as a bird-dragon with bared teeth and hands that look like extended claws and human-like legs, one foot clad in a shoe. It wears a dark suit with a red cloth and hovers over a green plateau in a cloudy sky, apparently ready to strike. A small green creature, also equipped with claw-like end links, seems to want to stop him. It is often interpreted as the Loplop bird, Max Ernst's artistic alter ego . The second version is reduced to the monster's head. The picture is owned by the art collectors Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch , Berlin. The third and final version is also in private hands. In it, the monster, wrapped in different colored cloths, already steps on the earth with one foot, and the little green creature has come very close to defend it.
literature
- Werner Spies : Max Ernst: L'ange du foyer. In: Jean Clair (Ed.): Melancholie. Genius and madness in art. Exhibition catalog. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern / Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1647-5 , pp. 60–63.
- Werner Hofmann : Fantasy pieces. About the fantastic in art . Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7774-2941-0 .
Web links
- 1937: The horror of history in Artus: Newsletter Art & Culture
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from Ulrich Bischoff: Max Ernst 1891–1976. Beyond painting . Taschen, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3-8228-6594-1 , p. 61
- ↑ The horror of history , weeklyart.blogspot.de, accessed on May 4, 2012
- ↑ Cassandra. Visionen des Unheils 1914–1945 , dhm.de, accessed on May 20, 2012
- ↑ Quoted from Ulrich Bischoff: Max Ernst 1891–1976. Beyond painting . Taschen, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3-8228-6594-1 , pp. 29, 95
- ↑ Quoted from Ulrich Bischoff: Max Ernst 1891–1976. Beyond painting . Taschen, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3-8228-6594-1 , p. 61
- ↑ The Head of the House Angel, smb.museum, accessed on May 20, 2012
