Mur et Soleil (Wall and Sun)

This print reproduces a 1931 painting in which Max Ernst utilized two chance procedures: collage and grattage. Like frottage, which Ernst also developed, grattage involved laying a painted canvas over a textured surface, then scraping away the paint to imprint the texture on the canvas. Here, a wrought-iron fence, its decorative elements captured via grattage, divides the composition. The shadowy dark green forest, visible through the orange bars of the fence, was a common theme in Ernst’s work. Drawing on his childhood memories of the forests of Brühl in the Rhineland, such landscapes represented a liminal space between the known and unknown, imaginary and real.