Oiseaux Verts - Pluie. Birds in Green - Rain. by Max Ernst, 1891-1976

Max Ernst, 1891-1976
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Oiseaux Verts - Pluie. Birds in Green - Rain.

Original etching with aquatint and mixed techniques printed in colours on special toned blue-green paper. 1959. Signed in pencil. Proof for the edition of 82 impressions (on varying papers). Printed at the Atelier Visat, Paris 1959. Issued by Marcel Zerbib, Galerie Diderot, 1959, for the series: Paroles Peintes - Painted Words.
Ref: Spiess-Leppien - Ernst Graphische Werk no 74 (2).

Beautiful tonal proof impression on cream chine appliqué and specially prepared and tinted hand-made Richard de Bas paper. Excellent condition. Full margins. Sheet: 12 7/8 x 10 5/8ins. Plate: 10 7/8 x 7 3/4ins (278x199mm)

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One of the graphic techniques which fascinated Ernst from the 1930's onwards was that of 'automatic writing'. At the height of the Surrealist movement he experimented widely, together with Miro and Dali, with the idea of image-making whilst in a state of hallucination, and in particular with random graphic strokes created in the manner of hypnotic 'writing'. What particularly appealed to him was the concept that such 'uncontrolled, non-conscious' strokes were expressed directly from the subconscious mind.

When Ernst became deeply involved with etching, working largely at Visat's studio in the period after the War, he returned to this 'automatic writing' concept. He did so because it seemed to him that the effects of line, tone and texture that could be made to appear on a copper plate as the random effect of acid-biting or 'stopping' were an extension of his surrealist use of drawing some twenty-five years earlier. Using line etching, random biting, aquatint textures, and open-bite tones, together with actual controlled line drawing on the plate, he began to make some of the most inventive and evocative etchings of any mid 20th century artist.

'Oiseau Vert' is a superb example of the creativity of this period of his graphic oeuvre. The bird and hand forms appear in a number of drawings and paintings. In the medium of etching he manages to make them appear and disappear within a constantly moving seemingly random pattern of lines and textures, here worked in a beautiful blue-green ink against a yellowy-green background.

This work is also given a particular visual beauty by the use of the special blue-green toned handmade paper which deliberately picks up the ink colours of the image.