Lot 71a D

In the 1950s the titles of a number of works by Max Ernst refer to the medium of water, for example, to oceans, rivers or, as in the case of our work, the Gulf Stream. The present composition may in fact suggest associations with a look inside the unknown world of the deep sea. In terms of painting it is impressive primarily on account of its subtle contrasting of warm, organic-looking patterns of colour within a cool, lightless space. Here the artist has achieved splendidly shimmering transparencies, whose delicate glow enters into an open dialogue with the shadows surrounding them. Compositionally our piece is not dissimilar to Max Ernst's works of the later 1920s, although, over the years, the artist was able to sensitively refine and develop the techniques of grattage and frottage, which were so important for his oeuvre.
The distinctive combination of technical experimentation and sensual feeling in Max Ernst's late work has also been emphasised by Werner Spies: “The sensualism of the transparent colours and textures now evidently became easier to grasp before the background of the painting of the postwar period. After the gloomy, pronouncedly pessimistic works created in the war years, these new pictures - in which the dark, streaked forms make room for a depiction of chromatic and formal relationships - had to change the concept of his work. While interest during the pre-war period was concentrated primarily on Max Ernst the iconographer, the inventor of an encoded pictorial world, there was now, in a certain sense, a shift towards a greater awareness of the incredibly inventive 'technician'. However, a closer look reveals that this 'informal quality', which was now starting to be discovered in his work, had belonged to his oeuvre from the very beginning” (Werner Spies (ed.), Max Ernst. Retrospektive zum 100. Geburtstag, Munich 1991, p. 552).