In 1942, Max Ernst paid a visit to the New York studio of Dorothea Tanning. He was not only captivated by her work, but also by her. The couple married in 1946, and their artistically fruitful relationship lasted until Ernst's death in 1976. Now a selection of works by Max Ernst from the personal collection of Dorothea Tanning will be offered at Bonhams' The Mind's Eye / Surrealist Sale on 25 March in London. Leading the selection will be Ernst's artwork Comète, 1951, which has an estimate of £120,000-180,000.
Head of Sale, Ruth Woodbridge, commented: "Max Ernst was one of the central figures of the surrealist movement, and his experimental works – executed across a variety of different mediums – expressed his playful nature. Though he moved away from surrealism in his later life, his works maintained a surrealist quality, often touching upon psychological ideas and containing dreamlike imagery. His relationship with Tanning clearly influenced him creatively, and this is a rare opportunity to acquire works with such exceptional provenance – and share in Ernst and Tanning's surrealist love story."
Leading the selection will be Comète, painted in 1951, which expresses Ernst's intense interest in astrology. This passion can be traced back to his early works, but it gained a new lease of life after Ernst and Tanning moved from New York to the desert of Arizona in 1945. Muted greys, greens and blues, were substituted by more vibrant and uplifting hues resembling the mesmerising colours and the starry nights of the Sedonian landscape.
After the Second World War, the artistic landscape shifted to a focus on post-war American art – and in Comète Ernst partly incorporated newly prevailing approaches like abstraction, treating the canvas as a flat surface onto which he created a playful image of the cosmos, complete with childlike facial features. The year before he completed Comète, Ernst visited France for the first time since 1941 – and was able to witness Europe's recovery with his own eyes. This imbued his work with a new sense of optimism.
Max Ernst was born in Brühl, near Cologne, in 1891. Although he had no formal training as an artist, Ernst would become one of the pioneers of the Dada and Surrealist movements. In 1921 he met the surrealist poet Paul Éluard, and in 1922, unable to secure the necessary papers, Ernst entered France illegally and settled into a ménage à trois with Éluard and his wife Gala (who would later marry Salvador Dalí). Ernst had an often-turbulent love-life, and had a relationship with fellow Surrealist painter, Leonora Carrington, before he was interned as an "undesirable foreigner" during the Second World War – and fled to America with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, whom he married in 1941. It was during his marriage to Guggenheim that Ernst met Dorothea Tanning, and the pair began a relationship. Ernst and Tanning were married in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet P. Browner in 1946 and would be together until Ernst's death in 1976. Tanning, who had her own long and successful career as an artist, died in 2012 at the age of 101.
Writing in the Spring edition of Bonhams Magazine, Waldemar Januszczak, said: "In 1949, Ernst, who had been having trouble with his American papers, returned to France with Tanning, and from 1953 they were based there. The works that are coming up at Bonhams were in her personal collection and are, therefore, charged with an intimate importance.It was in France that he made the sculptures in the sale, notably La Tourangelle, originally conceived as a trophy for the winner of the Short Film Festival held in Tours from 1960 to 1962. After his death, Tanning kept it in her home. As with so much of Ernst's post-war sculpture, La Tourangelle can be imagined as the offspring of a union between a chess piece and a native American totem of the kind Ernst had encountered frequently in Sedona."
Other highlights of the sale include:
• Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), Operation Wednesday. Painted in March 1969. Estimate: £300,000-500,000.
• Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Cinq personnages surréalistes: Femmes à tête de fleurs, femme à tiroirs (évocation du jugement de Pâris). Executed in 1937. Estimate: £300,000-500,000.
• Leonor Fini (1907-1996), Le Traitement. Painted in 1972. Estimate: £60,000-80,000.
• René Magritte (1898-1967), La Chambre d'Écoute. Executed circa 1955. Estimate: £50,000-70,000.
• Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012), Untitled (Executed circa 1959). Estimate: £8,000 - 12,000.
• Eugène Atget (1856-1927), Fête Du Trône, 1926. Estimate: £22,000 - 28,000.