War of two roses
1955
- Medium
- oil on wood panel
- Measurements
- 27.0 × 35.0 cm
- Inscription
- incised in paint l.c.l.: max ernst
incised in paint l.r.: max ernst 55 - Accession Number
- 3685-4
- Department
- International Painting
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1957
© Max Ernst/ADAGP, Paris. Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited - Gallery location
- Late 19th & early 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
-
In 1953 Max Ernst left Arizona and settled in the French region of Touraine with his American wife, the Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning. Living on their farm, Pin-Perdu, the couple enjoyed a period of tranquillity and great productivity. Tanning repeatedly used rose imagery, stating that ‘around 1955 my canvases literally splintered … I broke the mirror, you might say’. The title of this 1955 grattage (rubbing) painting by Ernst is obscure, but perhaps refers to this episode or even to the skein of graduated pinks rippling across the lower section of the image and emerging from beneath a black surface layer.
- Subjects (general)
- Abstract Art
- Subjects (specific)
- curves (geometric figures) orange (colour) shape (form attribute) texture (artistic concept)
- Movements
- Modernism Surrealism
