A collection of prints by leading Dada and Surrealist artist, Max Ernst, assembled by Ernst O.E. Fischer and comprising 164 sheets. Approximately 66 additional pieces in bound books are now part of the Library's core collection. It constitutes a comprehensive selection of the artist's graphic oeuvre and includes a number of unique examples.

Max Ernst, a leading Dada and Surrealist artist, was born in Brühl, Germany on April 2, 1891. He co-founded the Cologne branch of the Dada movement in 1919 with Johannes Baargeld ("Johnny Money" née Alfred Grünewald) and mounted the first Dada exhibition in Cologne that same year. His interest in technical and technological experimentation in all mediums is perhaps most evident in his graphic work. Ernst had little formal instruction in the arts, other than from his father, a self-taught amateur artist. Ernst chose instead to study philosophy and art history at the University of Bonn, beginning in 1910 until his enlistment in the army in August, 1914. In his graphic work, following a small series of linoleum cuts from 1912 and a recently discovered (1985) woodcut from 1917, he entirely abandoned traditional relief printing, the preferred medium of the Expressionists, in favor of intaglio and planographic methods. These methods enabled him to employ collage elements through the use of transfer and photographic technologies in combination with the more traditional techniques.

164 sheets (4 boxes, 30 flat file folders)

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Open for use by qualified researchers.