Lot 26*,AR
MAX ERNST(1891-1976)La comète affolée
23 November 2021, 16:00 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £31,500 inc. premium
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MAX ERNST (1891-1976)
La comète affolée
signed and dated 'Max Ernst 51' (lower right)
pastel on blue paper
32.4 x 49.7cm (12 3/4 x 19 9/16in).
Executed in 1951
signed and dated 'Max Ernst 51' (lower right)
pastel on blue paper
32.4 x 49.7cm (12 3/4 x 19 9/16in).
Executed in 1951
Footnotes
Provenance
Alexandre Iolas Gallery, New York.
Alexander L. Berliner Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1961).
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 8 May 1991, lot 171.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 29 June 1994, lot 265.
Acquired at the above sale by the family of the previous owner; their sale, Christie's, New York, 14 May 2019, lot 148.
Private collection, Taiwan (acquired at the above sale).
Literature
W. Spies, S. & G. Metken, Max Ernst, Oeuvre-Katalog, Vol. V, Werke 1939-1953, Cologne, 1987, no. 2884 (illustrated p. 297; incorrectly illustrated as no. 2883).
The present work is a study for the final oil painting Comète which was sold in the Bonhams March 2021 The Mind's Eye: Surrealist Sale.
Comète came from the collection of Dorothea Tanning, the artist's second wife after his short marriage to Peggy Guggenheim in the early 1940s. The work references Ernst's keen interest in astrology, which is seen in his oeuvre as early as 1909. Moving to Arizona in 1945, the clear, starry night skies of the Sedona desert served to reinvigorate his fascination for the celestial and prompted a transformative stage in his art.