Max Ernst

Max Ernst Tête à Cornes 1959 Gold, 23 carat. Plastic jewelry pendant. 18,7 x 12,7 cm. Mounted in original wooden frame (42,3 x 36,4 cm). Marked on the reverse with the embossed artist's name 'max ernst', numbered '6/8', the two four-digit reference numbers of the Atelier François Hugo and a mark of the goldsmith. Copy 6/8 - In very nice condition. Spies/Metken 3783, I Provenance Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia Exhibitions Cf. Paris 1961 (Le Point Cardinal), Max Ernst, Oeuvre Sculpté 1913 - 1961, cf. no. 54 ("Huismes, 1959. 1960"). Literature Claire Siaud/Pierre Hugo, Bijoux d'Artistes, Hommage à François Hugo, Aix-en-Provence 2001, p. 99 with full-page color ill. "Tête à Cornes", "Horned Head", belongs to the golden or silver jewelry pieces, rare on the art market, which Max Ernst created in congenial collaboration with the Parisian goldsmith François Hugo since 1957. On his initiative, Ernst designed small models made of plasticine, a special modeling clay, which Hugo transformed into 23-karat gold sculptures. While Hugo transformed some of these plaques into brooches, i.e. pieces of jewelry, he interpreted others in the sense of a relief and mounted them accordingly on contrasting dark bases. Thematically, "Tête à Cornes" is a small mask. This theme found its way into Ernst's work when he lived with his wife Dorothea Tanning in Sedona, Arizona, since 1946 and studied the cult objects of Native Americans, such as the Zuni or Hopi Indians. Their formal vocabulary was influential both for his most famous sculpture, the life-size sculpture "Capricorn", and for the decorative reliefs with which Max Ernst furnished his house in Sedona. Also for the offered plaque, which becomes a face by means of the three circles, Ernst designed a mask, which plays a role in the history of mankind in ritual-cultic, foolish or symbolic form. Like the exemplary Indian masks, it lives from the suggestive magic of the eyes, which are fixed and large on the viewer.