Exhibition Max ErnstSurrealism, Art and Cinema offers a unique journey through the life and career of Max ErnstCombining works in various media—paintings, sculptures, collages, frottages, illustrated books, and photographs—all selected for their connections to cinema, this exhibition offers an innovative and unprecedented approach to the work of the celebrated German surrealist artist.

Max Ernst (1891-1976): painter, sculptor, draftsman, graphic artist, and poet. Or even: Max Ernst, Dadaist, Surrealist, Romantic, Pataphysician, and humanist. Today, his life and work seem kaleidoscopic, extremely multifaceted, and at the same time inimitable. For the first time, and through specific research, the exhibition Max Ernst: Surrealism, Art, and Film presents the artist's life and work in relation to the medium of cinema. Indeed, "the Seventh Art" represents a parallel and ever-present path in the artist's life and career.

In 1921, André Breton compared Max Ernst's collages to cinema and described the unique way in which his works helped to transcend traditional, two-dimensional media (painting and drawing), which remained frozen in stillness. He also described the artist as a magician, "the man of these infinite possibilities," and emphasized that "Ernst projects before our eyes the most captivating film in the world."

Indeed, Ernst's relationship with cinema has always accompanied his activity: his work has massively inspired surrealist cinema, along with directors and artists from later years to the present day; he himself has been an actor, but also a member of film juries and a designer of film awards; finally, his life has become the subject of numerous films and documentaries, revealing a constant and mutual exchange between his artistic practice and cinema.

Film clips and immersive projections constantly and dynamically engage with the artworks, through an exhibition design that immerses the visitor in the artist's unique, adventurous, and restless life, spanning most of the 20th century, revealing connections with classically progressive themes such as exile and transcultural and environmental issues.

Image credits: Max Ernst, The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1945, Oil on canvas, 108 x 128 cm, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg