Max Ernst created fantastic worlds through images throughout his career. But it is only when one sees his work in relation to the images of his life -his letters, photographs, poetry and diaries, so brilliantly reproduced on these pages-that one begins to understand his world, a world spent at the epicentre of 20th-century artistic life.

Max Ernst: Life and Work draws on an unprecedented collection of source material, much of which is published here for the first time, to present a compelling portrait of the artist's life and an intellectual portrait of an entire period. Edited by Werner Spies, a close friend of the artist and the leading authority on Max Ernst's extraordinarily rich, surreal world,these letters and notes by friends and contemporaries provide insight into the reception of his oeuvre, illustrate Ernst's own texts and shed light on his biography. This vast range of documents includes texts and letters by Hans (Jean) Arp,Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Benjamin Peret, Joe Bousquet, Lotte Lenya, Peggy Guggenheim, Leonora Carrington, Georges Bataille, Julien Levy, Loni and Lothar Pretzell, Eva Stunke and Eduard Trier,among others.

DIRECTIONS FOR USE

Werner Spies

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

How Max Ernst Plays with a Literary Genre

Julia Drost

FRANCE

1922-1941

AMERICA

1941 - 1949

EUROPE

1949-1976

CATALOGUE

OF ILLUSTRATED WORKS